Chapter 11

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, it has been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Living in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s Andrew had memories and recollections of three different kinds of terrorism. There was terrorism in the Middle East; all relating to Israel, the aftermath of the two wars in 1967 and 1973. He watched, without completely understanding, the Munich Olympics, the massacre, and remembered asking his parents a lot of questions. But there seemed to be no impact in Britain, it happened somewhere else and all Andrew saw were the images and stories on the TV news. And he was only seven and eight years old when Munich and the Yom Kippur War happened. There was so much he was too young to understand or didn’t have the background to. The second kind of terrorism was that of the radical groups in continental Europe; Angry Brigades, Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Red Army Faction, groups like that. The ideology was often tied into events and groups in the Middle East. They were also anti-capitalist, anti-establishment groups; but again something that happened somewhere else. Most of the worst attacks happened before Andrew was 12 and again during his teenage years he struggled to understand much of it. The third kind of terrorism that Andrew remembered, and unsurprisingly more vividly than the rest, was the IRA terror campaign both in Northern Ireland and in England. This was real, he himself had felt the shockwave of a terrorist’s bomb. It was also on the news almost every night and so he had better knowledge of it, a better understanding of it. Nothing like all the background but it was the most real to him.

So Western Europe and the Middle East were repeatedly exposed to terror attacks. Although there were many successes against the terrorists it was always just a few words in the days after. There were these terrorist groups out in the world and sometimes they attacked. The next day or the following week you would find out about it. But Andrew went to school in Edinburgh and these things happened ‘out there’, it did not impact his life, anyone’s life in Edinburgh. Then in 1980 there was a siege at the Iranian Embassy in London, regional separatists rather than anything religious or ideological but the result was there were a bunch of people taken hostage. Several days after the siege started two people were killed and the British Government took action.

Live on national television.

That evening was the genesis of all the Special Forces bullshit that the world has had to listen to ever since. The ‘our Special Forces are meaner than your Special Forces’ claims and counter-claims. A grown-up equivalent of ‘my dad is bigger than your dad’. All the Israeli stuff, all the first Gulf War, all the Bin-Laden hunting stories. Was it really him when they finally caught him? All that excess can be traced back to that May evening in 1980.

Andrew’s Dad had dragged him through from his room to watch it live on television. At the time none of the TV commentators had a clue what was going on. Nada. Men entirely clad in black, including balaclavas, rappelled onto a 1^st floor balcony, carrying something. Five seconds later there is a huge explosion and they disappeared inside. For the next 10 minutes there was the sound of repeated gunfire within the building and soon there are flames coming out of the building. The assault was precise, but the co-ordination with other people needed work. Complete chaos in the street, the news crews had no idea what was going on. And millions and millions of people watched live, in colour, on their television.

When it was all over, guess what was the most feted regiment of the British Army? The 22^nd Special Air Service Regiment. Special Forces fever was born.

Fast forward five years and Cambridge University Officer Training Corp had its annual camp at the Sennybridge Training Area in Wales. Where the SAS selection courses were run from. For the wannabe warriors of the OTC they had died and gone to heaven. The chat in the run up to the camp was so utterly bollocks that it was funny. Andrew remembered the dust-ups at the previous year’s camp when several of the Company got smacked about by Queen’s Division new recruits. 18 year olds barely days into the Army. Andrew only hoped that they did not run into any of the trained regular army never mind any special forces. To the rest of the army the OTC cadets were a waste of oxygen, a bunch of useless students who all needed a good shoeing. He had been around enough Sapper camps to know to keep his mouth shut. The wannabe warriors not so much. They should have made it a training exercise for the SAS. How quickly can you make 100 students pee themselves in terror without drawing blood? Two hours tops. Okay maybe it wasn’t that bad but it did feel like it at the time. In reality they were going to a typical Army camp in Wales, cold, draughty, limited hot water, middle of bleeding nowhere.

Maybe Andrew was overly cynical but having been around enough army camps over the previous five years he also was realistic. That was the bit that he didn’t get. Being proud or impressed by the SAS he could understand, he was both himself. But it was the wannabe warrior’s mentality that Andrew didn’t get. Particularly the ‘I could be in the SAS’ delusions that went on. Quick and dirty there were 10,000 students in all the OTCs spread across all the different universities throughout the country. Andrew doubted that five of the cadets, from the whole country, could actually pass the selection and get into the regiment. Maybe he was wrong and was underestimating his fellow cadets. But he knew for damn sure that the 1,000 plus wannabe warriors from all of the OTCs were not all going to be selected. It got tiresome, in case you hadn’t guessed.

Their Permanent Staff had been given shit by their equivalents at the previous camp at Bassingbourn, or at least that was the consensus for their behaviour, so goodness only knew what was going to happen when they got to Sennybridge. While the wannabes burbled on like a kindergarten on a day out to the zoo most of the rest of the cadets were getting ready for a steady and unrelenting dose of regular army shouting.

Of the SAS there was not a sign. Of course. The camp was not huge but still big enough that they were not in all parts of it. What they did find were six other OTCs, from SW England, the midlands and Wales. No regular army on site, at least in their part of the camp, and so the anticipated petty bullshit and shouting never materialised. Sure there was some but nothing out of the ordinary. With so many OTCs a lot of the exercises immediately had a healthy, bordering on unhealthy, dose of competition. So they tramped round the Welsh hills for a week, the infantry on assault. The Junior Under Officers, so Andrew and the rest of the 2^nd years, led sections in these exercises while the Senior Under Officers, the 3^rd years and above, were leading platoon size attacks. It was a matrix of training. The 1^st year cadets were being led by 2^nd and 3^rd years but at the same time there were permanent staff checking on, and correcting this training, as well as checking on and training the more senior cadets. Unless they were going to fuck up big time the staff left them to wallow in their mistakes and then debriefed them at the end. There were a lot of eyes on all levels of the cadets at all times. They were under canvas several nights, not that they got much sleep, and kept on the go for most of the week. With so many of them in the training area there was a sense of camaraderie within the units. Andrew’s recollection of the actual attacks was that they went well. Not perfect, there was always something to work on but for the most part the exercises went well. Two of the exercises happened at night and if no one shouted at you then it was good. Nobody had a clue what was going on anywhere else. On the Friday night of the first week they were all back in the camp and in the Mess for some beers. Rollie, Matt and Jack were giving Andrew shit for leaving annual camp early, again. What was worse he was going somewhere relatively cushy, at least compared to the Welsh mountains.

“How many Sapper camps have you been to now?”

“This will be my fourth. Why?”

“Just curious Mac. Not many people are getting off this camp. After the AT in the second week of camp last year I think they are making up for it this year.”

“Yeah, but I was not in Bavaria to witness the scene of Jack’s triumph. I went to Salisbury bleeding Plain again and ended up outside Chatham as usual.”

This led them to a good-natured reminisce of Jack and his conquest. The way Rollie and Matt described her it might have been the other way round. It stopped them having a go at Andrew for skipping a second fun week in the Welsh mountains. Instead he was being sent to another of the Engineering Regiments, the 39^th this time. They were a specialised airfield repair unit and were based all of six miles outside Cambridge. So at the end of the two week camp Andrew had a 10 minute cab ride to get back to the TA Centre while everyone else had a five hour journey in the back of a Bedford Truck. He had not asked to get experience with this regiment, he was going where they told him.

“You could go to Cindies while you are there.”

That was Jack’s contribution.

“Everyone has gone. I never thought about it before, but do you think there are squaddies there during term time?”

They looked at each other. Rollie voiced the obvious answer.

“Must be. I don’t recall seeing any obvious looking guys but I would assume so. Maybe at the weekend.”

So the next morning two LandRovers left with six cadets going to specialised training. There was only one other guy in Andrew’s LandRover, a guy from Birmingham OTC who they dropped off there. It was late afternoon when he arrived at Waterbeach Barracks outside Cambridge. Andrew was the last of four OTC cadets to arrive, one had come down from Newcastle and two were up from London.

Airfield repair was something he had never considered, beyond some scenes in Battle of Britain movies where the runways were bombed by the Germans. Even then there were no shots of filling all the earth back in, and making the runways usable again. Concrete runways and bigger bombs meant that airfield repair was now something that required a lot of specialised equipment. A large part of it was just regular construction equipment, only painted green. Bulldozers, dump trucks, scrapers, concrete mixers, JCBs, everything that you would see on a motorway construction site was there. But in addition there were huge hydraulic compactors, armoured bulldozers for dealing with bomb fragments and shrapnel, and several specialised front loaders that unrolled mats of mesh and interlinked steel plates when repairs were needed urgently.