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

the perfect design. Finally, in the unlikely event an operative should ever be separated from his escape kit, various items should be sewn into his clothes, boots and pockets.
    Anything is fair game as far as survival is concerned. Even when fully stripped, it is your task to smuggle through as much as you can. You still have the inner folds of your cheeks, your anus, and your vagina should you be female, left to play with. The less squeamish spare not even a second thought when inserting a cigar tube laden with survival equipment up their tail end. It is probably my medical training, but I have always balked at the idea. Public school education perhaps. You must be careful when placing items up your anus. Having once spent six months of my civilian life working for a tail-end surgeon, I have seen all manner of things put in that never make it out again. Not without help from a doctor that is. Screwdrivers, spoons, whole vibrators, broom handles. Diversity in human taste never ceases to amaze me. The female vagina is effectively a blind-ended tube. Most items that go in will come out again easily enough. The anus is different. It is the bottom of a very long, open tube, starting with the mouth at the top. Should you pop something up it, it can keep going upwards rather than stay where it is. Lost forever, until a surgeon opens your belly to retrieve it. You have been warned.
    That night we were cast ashore on an unidentifiable Scottish island. There was me, a policeman, a doctor and one other. In exchange for our nakedness, we were each given a pair of laceless, ill-fitting army boots, some coarse army trousers and a buttonless shirt. That was it, though we were also told not to swim to the neighbouring island. Gruinard Island, the SBS advised, had been used for anthrax experiments in the last war. It was still uninhabitable. The anthrax bacillus can survive for decades in soil. It is a particularly nasty way to die, causing large pustules and damage to your skin and other vital systems. There has never been anything fair about germ warfare.
    Your first reaction, when cast ashore in the middle of nowhere, is to become obsessed by hunting for food. It is the wrong approach. Your priority, particularly in Scotland, must be shelter. You can easily survive for a couple of days on water alone. Exposure can kill you.
    Near our landing we found a tiny cave, well sheltered from the wind in its small cove. My mistake was to build a fire at the back of the cave, rather than its entrance. Within seconds I had smoked the place out. The four of us coughed and choked for hours. I had managed to smuggle a small book of matches past our earlier search. The match supply was not limitless, so once lit, a fire had to be kept burning. The survival books are full of many different ways to light fires in the wild. Flints and tinder, bowstring and stick, and many more. In practice, anything other than a match is a challenge.
    By the afternoon of our first day, the cave was well organized. We had arranged a somewhat flexible rota for keeping the fire ablaze and could then start looking for food. My first thought was to kill one of the few wild sheep I could see wandering the hills. I had no weapon, but if I could get close enough I did not think it would take much to break its neck. Two of us set about trying to catch the animal. Fortunately, no one else was there to see us.
    I had always thought sheep were dumb, daft creatures whose sole contribution to life was to leave slimy droppings over Nature’s mountainsides and to give good company to mint sauce. Scottish specimens are different - and extremely tough. We had decided the best approach would be to corner it at one end of a small peninsula and drive it over the edge to its death on the rocks below. We forced it to the peninsula easily enough, but no sooner did it reach the edge, it turned. It had small horns and very dark eyes. It looked first at me, then at my companion, then back to me. I