His A.S.U (active service unit) had planned to lay a land mine, consisting of beer kegs crammed with low explosive, in a culvert at the entrance to the hotel. By the time we got the call the bomb was in place.

As Al's car drove past, they must have heard it and hidden.

Unfortunately the car stopped just feet from two of the boys. As he sent the Schermuly up, they must have seen his silhouette and opened up.

Al took rounds but managed to turn and fire back.

Then he fell.

They moved off and got to the banks of the Bannagh River. One of them jumped into the water to cross to the other side. The river was only about twenty feet wide, but it was in flood, and there were deep pools.

When he got over, he couldn't find his companion. He'd drowned further downstream.

The troop was a close-knit group, and Al Slater's death put all of us on a downer. It's never easy losing somebody you know, but there's not a lot you can do about it, you've got to get on with it. Within about two days the jokes were being cracked.

We were going to have a Christmas p.i.s.s-up. The troop invited all the different personalities from the police force and other organizations that we had dealings with.

One of the policemen there, a fellow called Freddie, had lost his left hand in an accident and had a Gucci replacement strapped onto his stump.

It worked on electrodes, and gave him the capability to flex his fingers to grasp things, but unfortunately the arm occasionally developed a mind of its own. It would be all right when he put it on, but then all of a sudden the electrodes would short-circuit and the fingers would be flexing all over the place like something out of an old B movie. We all used to think it was great.

We were thinking about getting him a present, and there was much humming and hawing about what it should be. The best we could come up with was a regimental plaque, but Ken said, "That's c.r.a.p. Don't worry, I'll sort it out."

Freddie turned up at the do, and there must have been 150 or so people present.

Ken got up with a small parcel in his hand, wrapped in fancy paper and ribbons.

"Well, Fred," he said, "this is just a little something to say thanks very much for all the help and support this past year. We hope this will come in handy, and rather than give you something really bone like a plaque to hang on a wall, we thought we'd give you something much more practical."

"Thanks very much," said Fred. He started to undo the ribbons and paper, which took him ages because Ken had used four layers of wrapping just to f.u.c.k him up. At last, after Fred had got a decent sweat on wrestling with ribbons and sellotape, our gift was finally revealed in all its glory-a can of WD40.

Freddie took it really well, rolled up his sleeve, and had a little squirt.

I bought Al's Barbour jacket at the auction; it would have been cheaper to have bought a brand-new one, but that's how it goes.

n.o.body was worse affected by Al's death than Frank Collins.

"I've seen a lot of mates die during my seven years in the Regiment," he said, "but this has. .h.i.t me the hardest."

Maybe Al's death was the first big test of his Christian faith.

Frank left the Regiment soon afterward and decided to train to be the ayatollah. However, he wanted to pay off his mortgage before he enrolled at Bible college, and his first freelance job took him to Sri Lanka.

Frank lasted two weeks. When I saw him much later in Hereford, he said, "They had no understanding of right or wrong and thought nothing of wiping out Tamils. Some of the people we trained committed atrocities.

It was well paid, but I came straight home."

He then got a BG (bodyguard) job in Athens and worked for Burton chief Sir Ralph Halpern and Harrods boss Mohammed Al-Fayed. finally, when he'd saved up enough, he did the church's version of Selection and pa.s.sed. After two years of studying he was badged as a fully-fledged vicar, and an excellent one he was, too.

Debbie had a job, and I a.s.sumed she was enjoying it. I didn't know for sure because I was never there.

I phoned her whenever I could, but every time I'd tell her how I was and never really listened when she told me how she was. I still wasn't getting my priorities right.

Everything was the Regiment; I loved what I was doing.

But I was being selfish; I was sacrificing the marriage, and it was my fault. If I came back for R&R, all I wanted to do was go downtown an see all my mates again. Everything I did revolved around them; she was secondary. It must have been outrageous for her.

I was even stupid enough to start talking about kids when I wasn't even responsible enough to look after my wife.

But I didn't realize, because I was a d.i.c.khead. I didn't know that the marriage was going down; I was too busy wanting to get the skills in, and the big one I wanted was demolitions.

One of the aims of this twelve-week course is to teach industrial sabotage, strategic tasks, and strikes on defined targets," the instructor said to us. "A typical Regiment task might be to render useless the industrial base of a nation we're fighting against. Their army might be at the front line, but at the end of the day an army's no good if it can't get supplies.

Attacks on the industrial base also lower the population's morale, which is all good for the general war effort."

It was gripping stuff, and I couldn't wait to get stuck in. Even as a kid I'd been fascinated by television pictures of steeplejacks dropping power station chimneys I and tower blocks collapsing within their own perimeter.

I had a little basic knowledge from Selection, and I wanted more.

Training wing, as well as take Selection, was also responsible for teaching demolitions and all the patrol skills. Joe, the dems instructor, was coming up to the end of his two years in the job, and he really knew his stuff. Demolitions would also be used within other jobs, he said, as a surgical strike: We might want to drop a bridge, railway line, hydroelectric power station or crude oil refinery; or render docks useless, open floodgates, destroy military or civilian aircraft.

We learned how to disrupt microwave and landline communications within military and civilian environments. "So much damage can be done with just two pounds of P.E," Joe said. "Why send in an air force to destroy a big industrial complex when the same result could be achieved by taking out its power source?"

If we were going in covertly, we had to know and practice our trade craft-including surveillance and antisurveillance.

For the first couple of weeks we learned parrot-fashion all the rules, the dos and don'ts, and all the formulas. We weren't going to have our little reference books with us when we were on ops. Joe banged the rules into our heads from day one and tested us every day.

Every spare moment we had was taken up with learning it all by heart; to a scholar like me, it felt like trying to pour ten pounds of s.h.i.t into a two-pound bag.

We earned about all the explosives used by the British Army and others, 'what explosives were commercially available, and where and how we could get our hands on them.

Having obtained them, we had to know how to use the stuff.

Industrial sabotage nearly always involves cutting steel.

However, the explosions are not Hollywood cla.s.sics: A big blast, a ma.s.sive fireball, and the bridge comes tumbling down. The hallmark of a Regiment strike would be the minimum amount of explosives to create the maximum damage-unlike my effort with the b.u.t.tress tree on Selection-because then there's less to carry or make and less to conceal.

Depending on the type of bridge, the aim was to do specific cuts so that the bridge would collapse under its own weight. To demolish a building, all you do is initiate the momentum of the building falling, and the building itself does the rest.

We learned how to blow up everything from telecommunications lines to power stations, trains to planes.

Everything had to be destroyed in such a manner that it couldn't be repaired or replaced-or if it could, then it must take the maximum amount of time.

Destroying something did not necessarily involve laking it off the face of the earth. It might just mean making a small penetration of about half an inch with explosives into a certain piece of machinery.

That might be all that's needed to disturb the momentum of the turning parts inside. The machine then destroys itself. The skill is in identifying where the weak part is, getting in there to do it, and getting away again.

A lot of motorways and structures are built with concrete, so we learned how to destroy it, and that did take a lot of explosives.

Sometimes it wasn't enough just to take down the spans of bridges; the piers had to be cut as well to maximize the damage. Gaps could be repaired; whole elevated sections of motorway could be replaced in a fortnight, as the Californians prove every time they have an earthquake.

A large factory or even small town can be immobilized just by taking out an electricity substation. Obviously there are all sorts of countermeasures, and in times of conflict key points will be protected.

Much of the time, however, the Regiment would not be doing this in a theater of major conflict; we'd be doing it in a small guerrilla war or revolutionary scenario. If the target was protected, that would be just another problem we'd have to get over. We might be putting charges in to go off the following month. In theory a charge could be placed to blow up in five years' time. There are plenty of ways to initiate an explosion, from anywhere in the world.

We went down to one of the local bridges around Hereford, and each did a recce report in slow time (not covertly). We had a good look at the bridge, measured it out, and did whatever we needed to produce the mechanics of a recce report, wandering around the structure with tape measures and cameras as we worked out how to destroy it. While all the rest of us were doing this technical stuff, Bob, one of the world's most confident men, the sort who not only knows where he's going but also how he's going to get there and what time he's going to arrive, was doing pin steps along the footrail, whistling away as he counted them out.

Bob always spoke at Mach 2. "You don't need all this technical stuff, all these f.u.c.king tape measures," he scoffed. "If you were doing it for real, you'd just be pacing it out. Twenty feet, twenty-one feet"

When he got to the far end of the bridge, he sat down and did a film director's square on it, took a couple of snapshots, and relaxed in the sun.

The instructor came over and said, "You all sorted then, Bob?"

"Yeah, no problems. I'm happier doing it this way."

Bob sat there for the rest of the afternoon, enjoying the sunshine and having the occasional brew while everybody else was running around like an idiot. I was then up until two o'clock in the morning getting my recce report just right, but not Bob. He bounced into the cla.s.sroom the next day as fresh as a daisy and said, "Piece of p.i.s.s."

The instructor a.s.sessed our efforts and pa.s.sed comments. Most reports were competent, but Bob's, he announced, was outstanding.

"Enjoy yourself yesterday, did you?" he asked Bob.

"Lovely sunny day, wasn't it? I'm surprised you didn't get sunburnt, all the lying around you did."

"Did my report, though, didn't I?" Bob smiled. "And you reckon it's a blinder.) "In every respect," the instructor said, "except one."

"What's that?"

"All your photographs show a bridge in the p.i.s.sing rain!"

"That's extraordinary," Bob said. "Camera must be a bit damp."

Bob had spent the whole of the previous weekend doing all the photography and technical measurements on the bridge so that on the day he could p.i.s.s us off by appearing to do nothing. It would have gone down as one of the great st.i.tches if only he'd remembered that it had poured with rain the whole weekend.

The dems course taught us how to use the equipment, but it also taught us how to translate that information for other people to use.

Part of that involved covert photography and infrared photography.

We might be a businessman with a view from his hotel room or a hiker.

The stills or video camera might be concealed about our person or in a bag, or we'd be tucked a couple of kilometers back and using large mirror lenses in a covert OP.

As well as all the technical bits and pieces for the demolitions, we'd be looking at all the defenses. How many guards are at the gate?

Do they look alert? Are they slouched in a heap with f.a.gs in their mouths? What is the best way in and the best way out? We could be planning and preparing for another group, telling them what charges were required and sorting out the RVs and exfil from the target. We might be required to stay in the area afterward to confirm damage and rea.s.sess.

It was all part of demolitions; there was much more to it than Clint Eastwood on his horse, lighting a stick of gelignite and lobbing it over a wall.

We had all been trained in trauma management, dealing with gunshot wounds and fractures, stabilizing injuries, and intravenously administering fluids; everybody had the skill to keep a person alive if he'd been hit by a bomb blast or rounds. But the kind of work that the Regiment is involved in calls for somebody who has taken it a stage ' further; the patrol medic must be able to carry out surgical procedures in the field, to recognize illnesses and prescribe and administer drugs.

The result then is a patrol that can stay longer out in the field if it has a major problem; helicopters don't have to be called in to extract a casualty, with the risk of compromise.

The Regiment operated a "hearts and minds" policy in the Third World countries where it worked. In Oman in the seventies, for example, a lot of the Regiment's time was taken up with looking after the Baluch and the Firqat, prescribing drugs and looking after their welfare.

There were case notes that covered everything from a.s.sisting with a birth to operating on a villager who'd had half his head blown off.

Sometimes the medic pack contained more drugs and equipment than some of their hospitals. The problem was that as soon as the medics started administering medical aid for major injuries and illnesses, there'd be a mile-long queue outside their A-frame of people with warts and ingrown toenails.

One of them told me: "We looked after a couple of blokes in the jungle who had problems with their feet.

Suddenly every man and his dog is on the case, turning up with little cuts and bruises on their tootsies. The next bloke that pestered us, we made it look as if we were going to amputate his foot.

We went through all the procedures of making sure the table was clear.

We had the knives out and all sorts."

Apparently they explained to the man that the only way to deal with such a troublesome foot was to take it off altogether, so if he'd just lie down on the table, they'd have it squared away in no time.

The cut suddenly wasn't such a problem, and the character ran away. He spread the good news about, and not many others turned up with bad feet.

Meeting up in Hereford with blokes who had been doing the medics course while I was doing dems, I heard some wonderful stories.

They had done about six weeks in Hereford, starting from the basics, learning how to put in Ivs (intravenous drips), administer drugs through injection, prescribe and use drugs. All the drugs had to be learned by their universal, Latin names, which 'Was enjoyed no end.

They then had to go away and do a couple of weeks at the London School of Tropical Medicine. Because a lot of the work was in tropical climates, they had to know about tropical diseases, how to prevent them, and the way of treating them when they did take hold.

It was then back to Hereford for a bit more time in the lecture room, and eventually they got their hospital attachments, all around the country. Most of their time was spent in casualty, getting hands-on experience; they could learn all the theory they liked, they were told, but there was nothing like a bit of hands-on with a road traffic accident casualty, or the Sat.u.r.day night people getting filled in and cut.

They had also spent a lot of time learning how to become hypochondriacs.

A fellow called Rod, who spoke with a thick Yorkshire accent and lots of "thee" and "nowt," spent the first two weeks of his month's hospital attachment working in the casualty ward. The next two weeks were taken up purely on his own body MOT. He'd be using all the machines that went ping, having his heart looked at, convinced that there had to be something wrong.

Charlie was another hypochondriac. He'd left the Regiment in his thirties, gone to work overseas, and then come back and done Selection again. He pa.s.sed and was the world's oldest corporal. We were doing some troop training and were on the ranges one day, sharing mugs.

Charlie hated us doing that.

"You don't know what you could pick up," he said.

"Too true," somebody said. "I was in the Far East and contracted leptospirosis. I lost about two stone."

"That was bad luck," Charlie said. "When did it happen?"

"Last month."

"you dirty f.u.c.king thing!" Charlie screamed. We all started to laugh, because we knew how much it p.i.s.sed him off. He honked for days about drinking out of the same mug as someone who'd had leptospirosis. He made his own tea after that.

At the -end of the week's training we said, "You ain't caught leptospirosis yet then, Charlie?"

"No," he said, "but I'm not too sure what all you people are going to catch."