Knife Edge: Life as a Special Forces Surgeon by Richard Villar

the questioner. Your only consolation is knowing it has to end sometime. It is not pleasant and there is no point in pretending that it is. You can make life difficult for your interrogator, however. Beyond firmly, but politely, refusing to answer anything other than the vital four, you can make yourself a very unpleasant specimen with which to deal. Peeing in your pants, and all down your trousers, is a good way. It makes you stink and puts the interrogator’s mind on other things. An alternative is to stay silent. Answer nothing at all, not even the vital four. Pretending to be ill, or inducing yourself to vomit, is another way. Again, it makes you smell and you are entitled to see a doctor at any time. This can offer a brief reprieve. However, the JSIW interrogators may not be SAS-trained, but are very shrewd. They have seen most of it before, but are also human and can have their own weaknesses exploited. Unfortunately, it is particularly uncomfortable standing for hours in the stress position with urine-soaked trousers. I have tried it. If you get it wrong and attempt to upset an interrogator who may be devoid of emotion, then you stand there feeling very silly indeed. Be careful when peeing in your pants. It does not always work.
    Despite the enormous mental strain to which a soldier is subjected during interrogation, injuries are fortunately few. Apart from nerve damage, the main worry is psychological. For the SAS trainee or operative there is much at stake if he talks under pressure. It is the end of a Special Forces career.
    Nothing emphasizes the loneliness of SAS service more than survival training. This is the art of staying alive, for indefinite periods, away from the normal lines of resupply. In the normal, ‘big’ army you will, or should, receive a regular supply of food and essentials. For an SAS operative, inside enemy territory, the situation is different. Resupply may not be physically possible. Even if it is, the act of resupplying may highlight the presence of an SAS patrol. The same applies should an operative escape after capture, with little more than the clothes in which he stands. Knowing how to live off the land that surrounds him is vital. This is the skill known as ‘combat survival’. Courses are run in various locations throughout the world. To be totally realistic, survival training should take place under hostile conditions. Not only should you survive, but you must not be caught doing so.
    I learned my survival on a tiny Scottish island, when working alongside the Special Boat Squadron, or SBS. I cannot remember the exact mechanics, but one September the SBS engineered that four of us should be captured. We were unceremoniously tied and locked into a gents’ lavatory somewhere on the mainland coast and held prisoner for several hours. Then, at dead of night, we were manhandled on to a motorized fishing vessel, an MFV, and taken out to sea. It was very dark. We were made to strip, all clothes being taken from us, including underwear. This was a tragedy. The well-prepared SAS operative should have items of survival equipment littered over him. If surprised when behind enemy lines, the first thing to be ejected is the heavy Bergen rucksack. With it go the normal comforts of SAS covert life. To compensate for its loss, the operative should at all times wear his belt escape kit, with his slingless rifle never more than one arm’s length away. Within the escape kit should be sufficient equipment to survive for as long as required without resupply. Lightweight ponchos, minicompasses, flints, razor blades, fishing-hooks and line. The list is long. You can spend months tinkering with your escape kit, trying to squeeze as much as possible into the tiny spaces a military webbing belt will allow. Sometimes you would talk for hours with SAS colleagues on the best type of fish-hook or gill net, or the ideal form of windproof match. Escape kits are very personal things. Everyone has his own idea on