Read Online First Into Action by Duncan Falconer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Duncan Falconer
Ads: Link
into a kind of euphoria. But as the day wore on and the realities of what I had got myself into set in, I became worried. After six months of ball-busting Royal Marines commando training I was, almost immediately, to attend probably the hardest special forces selection course in the world, equal in content and intensity to SAS selection, but including extensive diving and sea-canoeing, both conducted in wintry and stormy weather conditions.
I did wonder what he meant by, ‘Due to a sudden shortage of manpower.’ Had something terrible happened?
The reason, I was to find out later, was connected to the news article I’d read on the train to Deal six months earlier. When oil platforms had started appearing in the North Sea, pumping vast amounts of wealth into the country, the SBS, aware that the platforms were a target for terrorists, had evolved ways of assaulting and recapturing them in case one was hijacked and its crew held hostage. No other country’s special forces had yet considered the threat or were doing anything serious about it. The SBS had had to start from scratch, and it was a great way to help put the unit on the map.
The platforms were enormous, exposed and in the middle of nowhere, difficult to get to without being seen and in seas which averaged near storm conditions seven out of every eight days of the year. You had to be an expert diver, a fearless climber, have the stamina of an athlete, and sport a fair-sized set of nuts before you even got on to the lowest deck a hundred feet above the water to pull out your gun and become a soldier. That’s why they are called special forces. When SBS operatives first surfaced from beneath those terrible swells, they defied driving winds, rain and sometimes snow and ice to climb the immense, razor-sharp, barnacle-covered, slippery, towering steel structures armed to the teeth. But the oil platform executives did not see them as a potential rescue force, only a pool of Resource s from which they could recruit much-needed divers. The executives were propositioning the SBS members even before they had caught their breaths, offering them irresistible wages. In a short time the SBS lost over twenty per cent of its operatives. The Navy reacted by increasing diving pay, which was then followed by special forces pay. It still did not compete with the oil companies, but it reduced the flow to a trickle, and one of mostly older members on their way outside soon anyway.
This exodus from the SBS of those mainly older operatives did have a positive side. British Special Forces is a dynamic organisation, growing more high-tech each year. Twenty years ago, when a special forces operative went out into the field, he carried equipment no more than a few hundred pounds in value, the most expensive items being a pair of binoculars, a rifle, camera, his diving equipment, a canoe and a Morse code radio set. Today the same operative can expect to carry equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Night-viewing aids, satellite navigation systems, laser-guided weapon-sighting systems, satellite communicators with secure and coded signals and microwave wireless surveillance systems. Add to that list mini-submarines, high-speed surface craft and other specialised vehicles and delivery systems, all operated by SBS ranks themselves, and the value of the equipment entrusted to a single SBS operative zooms into the multi-millions. The squadron was going to need not just tough men with high physical and mental stamina, but educated men with the technical awareness to operate and understand these new sophisticated systems.
When I revealed to my squaddies that I was on my way to attend an SBS acquaint, instead of mocking me, to my surprise two of them, Andy and Dave, both tough and intelligent young men, went directly to the PSO and put themselves forward for the course. Looking back, Andy and Dave were far from ordinary as regular Marines. They were well-educated, Andy had a degree, and
I did wonder what he meant by, ‘Due to a sudden shortage of manpower.’ Had something terrible happened?
The reason, I was to find out later, was connected to the news article I’d read on the train to Deal six months earlier. When oil platforms had started appearing in the North Sea, pumping vast amounts of wealth into the country, the SBS, aware that the platforms were a target for terrorists, had evolved ways of assaulting and recapturing them in case one was hijacked and its crew held hostage. No other country’s special forces had yet considered the threat or were doing anything serious about it. The SBS had had to start from scratch, and it was a great way to help put the unit on the map.
The platforms were enormous, exposed and in the middle of nowhere, difficult to get to without being seen and in seas which averaged near storm conditions seven out of every eight days of the year. You had to be an expert diver, a fearless climber, have the stamina of an athlete, and sport a fair-sized set of nuts before you even got on to the lowest deck a hundred feet above the water to pull out your gun and become a soldier. That’s why they are called special forces. When SBS operatives first surfaced from beneath those terrible swells, they defied driving winds, rain and sometimes snow and ice to climb the immense, razor-sharp, barnacle-covered, slippery, towering steel structures armed to the teeth. But the oil platform executives did not see them as a potential rescue force, only a pool of Resource s from which they could recruit much-needed divers. The executives were propositioning the SBS members even before they had caught their breaths, offering them irresistible wages. In a short time the SBS lost over twenty per cent of its operatives. The Navy reacted by increasing diving pay, which was then followed by special forces pay. It still did not compete with the oil companies, but it reduced the flow to a trickle, and one of mostly older members on their way outside soon anyway.
This exodus from the SBS of those mainly older operatives did have a positive side. British Special Forces is a dynamic organisation, growing more high-tech each year. Twenty years ago, when a special forces operative went out into the field, he carried equipment no more than a few hundred pounds in value, the most expensive items being a pair of binoculars, a rifle, camera, his diving equipment, a canoe and a Morse code radio set. Today the same operative can expect to carry equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Night-viewing aids, satellite navigation systems, laser-guided weapon-sighting systems, satellite communicators with secure and coded signals and microwave wireless surveillance systems. Add to that list mini-submarines, high-speed surface craft and other specialised vehicles and delivery systems, all operated by SBS ranks themselves, and the value of the equipment entrusted to a single SBS operative zooms into the multi-millions. The squadron was going to need not just tough men with high physical and mental stamina, but educated men with the technical awareness to operate and understand these new sophisticated systems.
When I revealed to my squaddies that I was on my way to attend an SBS acquaint, instead of mocking me, to my surprise two of them, Andy and Dave, both tough and intelligent young men, went directly to the PSO and put themselves forward for the course. Looking back, Andy and Dave were far from ordinary as regular Marines. They were well-educated, Andy had a degree, and
Similar Books
