First-7

And, just like that, I was back at the bottom of the pile. When I arrived at 9 Parachute Squadron I was made to feel as if the blue beret and awards I’d been presented with in front of my mother and stepfather at the passing-out parade at Pirbright had all the value of a stone in my shoe.

We’d been instructed to report to Rhine Barracks at Aldershot Garrison, which is popularly known as the ‘Home of the British Army’ or sometimes ‘Aldershot Military Town’. They call it a ‘town’ because it’s enormous. Tipping up there on a blustery morning I could hardly believe the extent of the place. I passed building after building, road after road, and parade squares and offices and flags on poles and rows and rows of blocks of accommodation that held enough beds for more than ten thousand people. The deeper I got into the complex, the more it felt as if I were being swallowed up by some great machine.

But I was also becoming part of that machine. Now that I’d passed Basic Training I was on my way. Before we could get onto P Company, up at the Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire, I first had to pass what they called ‘Pre-Para’, a series of physical tests that would prove it was even worth my showing up. I was excited about this new challenge and looking forward to seeing my quarters, finding my little spot and settling in. I wasn’t expecting Claridge’s – I wasn’t even expecting Travelodge – but I knew this would be a bit of an upgrade from what we had to suffer as lowly sprogs down at Pirbright.

After a bit of a hunt, I found the special accommodation block that was kept for trainees. I pushed at the door and glanced inside. I was in the wrong place. I must have been. It was the smell that hit me first. Opening that door unleashed a funky, sour stink of damp and human dirt. Blinking through the foul pea-souper, I saw a concrete floor covered with stained and stinking mattresses and wooden lockers that had been smashed to bits. I knew that paratroopers had the reputation of being tough, grotty and contemptuous of comfort, but you wouldn’t let a stray dog sleep in there. I retreated quickly and loitered outside on the kerb until a uniformed man in his forties strode past.

‘Excuse me, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the trainee accommodation.’

‘You’ve found it,’ he said, frowning at the place I’d just exited. ‘You a craphat?’

I soon learned that all the Paras called us ‘craphats’ because, to them, that’s all we were. Trainees were seen as too lowly to even speak to. Unless they were doing us some kind of damage, the Paras would not even acknowledge our presence, literally looking through us as if we were invisible. To those guys you were Airborne – or you were shit. And we were definitely shit. And they let us know we were shit by the way they behaved around us, and by thrashing us as hard as they could, in the field and in the gym, every single day of training.

These days the Pre-Para course is led by formally trained, specialist instructors who make sure everything is done correctly, with proper warm-ups and breaks and an eye for the health and safety of the guys. But 1998 was a different era. Back then the whole thing was led in-house by two random lance corporals who’d just happened to have been selected for the task, and probably reluctantly. It seemed as if there were no rules or regulations or standards of care for us craphats that they took seriously – or even knew. This made for a very particular atmosphere that hung over the entire course. It felt dangerous, unstable. Lost in the maze of the Aldershot Military Town, you believed that nobody knew who you were, where you were, or cared what was happening to you, and that the lance corporals could do whatever they wanted to you.

It was those same lance corporals who decided if you were good enough to be sent up to Catterick for the P Company course. If they thought, for whatever reason, that you weren’t ready to make the leap, you’d just have to keep going on Pre-Para … and keep going … and keep going … and keep on fucking going, while praying with every morsel of faith you could find inside you that they’d put you in for the next course. If things went really badly, you’d be ‘RTU’d’, or ‘Returned to Unit’. Getting RTU’d meant they didn’t want you in their squadron at all. They’d seen what you had, and had come to the conclusion that there was no point in your persevering with Pre-Para. For me, that would have meant settling for being just an ordinary engineer. There was no way I was going to allow that to happen.

I might have been lighter in build than most of the other lads, and I certainly wasn’t as tall, but I was confident I’d make it through – and quickly. My achievements at Pirbright meant nothing here in Aldershot, but that didn’t matter. The fact remained that I’d smashed it. It would be a first-time pass for me. I wasn’t deluded, and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. It might even be the hardest thing I’d ever done. But the simple truth was I’d never failed at anything physical that had been thrown at me in my life. Couple that with my massive desire to achieve, and there was no way I was going to be hanging around here for long. I’d never wanted anything as badly as this. Every glimpse I’d grabbed of a full-blooded Para, on that first morning at the barracks, had felt like stealing a glimpse of God. To be able to wear the maroon beret and wings that would identify me as a member of the notorious ‘Airborne’ would feel like the ultimate achievement.

By the time I’d got myself settled in the tramp’s nest that was our accommodation, some of the other lads had started drifting in. There were about five new boys who’d turned up that day, all just as hungry as me. The guy sitting on the mattress next to me, it turned out, had been there for a few weeks already.

‘Neil Cranston,’ he said, introducing himself in a thick Brummy accent. He was a funny-looking lad, with a massive, bouldery head and a tiny face stuck in its middle. His ears looked like a bulldog had been at them, and there was a deep crevasse in the middle of his chin that had a strip of gingery brown hair inside it where his razor couldn’t reach.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said. ‘Anthony Middleton.’ I raised my hand for him to shake, but for some reason Cranston pretended he hadn’t seen it. I rubbed it awkwardly on my trousers.

‘So tomorrow morning we’re going to have to be outside at 6 a.m. sharp, OK?’ he said. ‘Green T-shirt, DPM (disruptive pattern material, aka camouflage gear) bottoms and your bergen (backpack) filled to forty pounds. There are scales over there in the corner, next to the bin. You’ll want to check your weight once you’ve packed.’

‘Great. Thanks, Neil,’ I said. ‘Cheers for letting me know, mate. So what’s it like here?’ I flashed him a smile. ‘Anything on the room service worth checking out?’

‘And don’t forget your water bottle,’ he said, completely ignoring my friendly attempt at bonding. ‘Fill it right up. He’ll be checking it too, so give it a good run under the tap, yeah?’

He stood up and walked off. Not the warmest of blokes, I thought, but at least I was now clued in.

The next morning found me out of bed at 5 a.m., present and correct outside at 6 a.m., kit on, bergen packed, water bottle filled all the way up. All the craphats were lined up in formation on a small patch of concrete that was being used as a makeshift parade square. In front of us stood a lance corporal who looked as wide as he was tall.

‘To join this squadron you’ve got to be the best of the best,’ he said. ‘Every fucker wants to get into 9 Para Squadron, and they want to get in for a reason.’

My gaze drifted to his maroon beret. I felt my body tense in anticipation of the extreme exertion I was about to put it through.

‘So if any of you new lads have tipped up here today with the idea that we’re about to accept any old shit, you’re sorely mistaken. We will begin with a basic fitness test. We’ll be doing a mile-and-a-half run and you’d better fucking keep up.’

A run? This was perfect. My legs fizzed with energy. I was a pent-up racehorse. All I wanted to do was launch into the run and show this guy what I had.

‘But before we begin, water bottles,’ he said. ‘Let’s see ’em. Come on. Open ’em up.’

We did as he asked, removing the caps and lifting the bottles up gingerly for inspection, making sure we didn’t spill a drop. I could hear him going up the line as he checked each one, ‘Put it away … put it away … put it away …’ Then he got to me. He stopped. He stooped. He peered into my bottle. He grimaced. He smelled of soap and fury. ‘What. The. Fuck. Is. That?’

‘Get out there,’ he said, pointing to a central space on the parade square in front of everyone, ‘and pour that fucking water over your head.’

I stepped out, turned to face the lads and did as he asked. The water was absolutely freezing. It ran down my neck and back, trickling down the crack of my arse and hung heavily in the cotton of my T-shirt. All the guys were staring directly ahead of them, showing me the respect of not watching in an obvious way. All except Cranston, that is, who was eyeballing me throughout with a subtle but undeniably smug expression on his face.

I bolted back up the stairs to the accommodation, the saturated material of my T-shirt slapping against my skin, and ran the bottle under the tap again. I made sure not to panic, to take my time, and to make sure it was absolutely as full as it could be. No more than forty seconds later I was back out in front of the lance corporal on the parade square again.

‘Middleton!’ he shouted. ‘Are you fucking stupid or are you fucking deaf? I said full to the brim.’

It was full. It was touching the brim. It really was. There was literally no way I could get it any fuller.

I poured the water over my head again, trying to avoid Cranston’s shithawk squint. What the hell was going on? Why was I being singled out? How had I highlighted myself? I took a guess that the lance corporal checked my records. Maybe he’d seen how well I’d done at Pirbright and was putting me in my place. Or what if it was worse than that? What if he was trying to break me?

I ran up the stairs again. Painstakingly, I made sure every last drop of water entered the bottle and, with the care of a master watchmaker, gently fastened the lid.

Forty seconds later: ‘Are you deaf or fucking stupid? Pour it over your fucking head.’

When I’d tipped four full bottles of freezing water over me and somehow managed not to show one glimmer of distress, he finally relented.

That evening one of the lads demonstrated the proper technique. You had to fill a bath with water, fully submerge the bottle, bang it to get all the bubbles out, then put the lid on in the bath, with the bottle still underwater. That was the only way you could get it filled up to his standards. And that wasn’t all. When the lance corporal came round to inspect it, you had to squeeze the bottle a little bit so the level came right up to the brim. Everybody knew how it was done except me.

I couldn’t believe that Cranston hadn’t told me this the night before, and then had rolled around in every second of my humiliation like a pig in shit. But, I told myself, at least the lance corporal hadn’t been singling me out. On the contrary, he was teaching me something that I’ve never since forgotten. It’s the attention to detail that’s important, even with something that seems so irrelevant as having your water touching the bottle’s brim. On the battlefield, those last two sips might be the ones that save your life. I’ve carried that lesson through my career. If you fuck up the small things, it leads to a big fucking disaster.

But this wasn’t much help to me during our Basic Fitness Test that morning. By the time I finally started out on the first mile-and-a-half run I had four bottles of freezing water hanging in my hair and clothes, and was wet, cold and humiliated. I realised right then that I could either allow what had happened to eat away at me or I could use it. Rather than trying to squash the anger, I let it grow. It became an energy. With every stride I visualised Cranston’s smug look, turning his animosity and betrayal into a battery that powered me. This, I knew instinctively, was the best revenge I could have possibly taken.

Despite the events of that morning I managed to come in second. Cranston, meanwhile, had finished somewhere near the back. At the end of a hard morning’s PT, we filed in for lunch. As ever, I sat alone on the corner of a table with a beaker of water and my rice and fish. Over my shoulder I could hear some of the boys talking to Cranston about me. ‘That Ant’s a fit lad,’ someone said. I couldn’t make out what he came back with, but I ate the rest of my meal happily. It wouldn’t be long until I’d be far away from that loser, earning my maroon beret up at Catterick. No doubt he’d be RTU’d before long and I’d never see him again.

After lunch it was time for another run, but this time with weighted bergens on our backs. They call it ‘tabbing’ – Tactical Advance to Battle. We had eight miles to cover with the forty-pound bergens we’d packed the night before using appropriate kit, a combination of our sleeping bag, mess tins, rations – anything we’d actually take into the field as a serving Para. At the allotted time we reported to the lance corporal, all lined up in formation once again with our bergens between our feet. On one side of him was a duty recruit with a set of scales. Spine straight and chin up, I watched the lance corporal going round, lifting up the bergens one by one and weighing them. He and his partner had arranged themselves so only they could see the result on the scales. This was no accident. It meant each one of us was shitting ourselves until the moment we were nodded through.

It was all I could do not to break out into a huge smile when Cranston’s bergen came in a pound under. ‘Go and get a rock,’ the lance corporal told him. He pointed to a particularly large specimen beneath a tree in a small patch of greenery on the other side of the road. As Cranston waddled back with it, I realised it must have added at least ten pounds to his bergen. Soon it was my turn. As I watched them lift my bergen onto the scales, I noticed Cranston was showing as much interest in the result as I was. A thought flitted through my head – maybe he’s tampered with it. For the longest two seconds, the lance corporal didn’t say anything. ‘All right, put it on your back,’ he said, finally. Thank God for that.

Then, the second our bergens had all been weighed, it began. ‘Follow me!’ shouted the lance corporal. With that, he and the duty recruit set off. And when I say ‘set off’ I mean, boom, they were gone, as if on rockets, out of the parade square, out of the base and into a massive military training area that must have covered at least twenty square miles. And I kept up with them. I made sure I did. For the first two miles. But then, at first almost unnoticeably but soon undeniably, I started flagging. ‘I can run,’ I thought to myself as my knees pumped and sweat ran down my neck, ‘I know I can run. But this weight is killing me.’

It took me a while to realise why it was so much easier for the others. The problem was my height. My legs were relatively short, which meant that I had to work that much harder. Whereas they could quickly stride, I had to sprint. Not that there was any point in making excuses. Tabbing was part of Pre-Para for a good reason: you go into operations with the weight that you need to survive on your back. You carry what it takes to sustain yourself in a war zone. If you couldn’t keep pace it meant you didn’t have what it took. It was as simple as that. There was no free pass for height, just as there was no free pass for the physically weak or the unmotivated. And I had no argument with that at all.

But still, I was finding it exhausting. With every step I took, the weight of the bergen shot up my calves into my chest, and seemed to punch another lump of energy out of me. And I knew there was a whole lot worse to come. The muddy track eventually took me to the base of a climb that I’d already heard all about. This one was legendary. Craphat Hill was called Craphat Hill because it eats Craphats. The sight of it bearing down on me swiped at my faltering energy like a bear’s paw. On my left I heard the breath of another lad about to overtake me. I turned. It was Cranston, who was still going hard with that big rock in his bergen. ‘You can run with fuck-all weight on your back,’ he panted, ‘but you’re shit now, aren’t you?’ What strength I had left melted away. I looked up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Craphat Hill was pretty much vertical. Desperately, I glanced behind me. With a sinking sense of shame and horror I realised I was last.

And that was how it went, first for days and then for weeks. Whenever we had tabbing I came in last, panting, short and sorry, every single time. Ironically, being last was a first for me. I hadn’t felt anything like this since I’d been bullied back at school. I began to dread tabbing. Perhaps because I’d highlighted myself by doing so well in that first race, some of the guys seemed to take a special pleasure in seeing me brought down to size. Usually led by Cranston, they began giving me a hard time back at the accommodation. It started as stage whispers in my presence – ‘What the fuck is he still doing here?’ Before long, people were up and in my face. ‘Just fuck off back to your unit, Ant,’ they’d say. ‘Give it up. You’re not going to make it.’

I knew they wanted a fight, and I knew Cranston was in the middle of it. But there was nothing I could do but try to maintain my strength of character. Just as it had been with Ivan in Pirbright, I wasn’t going to let them push me into being someone else. Despite how they were acting, I treated them with the very respect they were finding it so hard to extend to me.

At least things were going better outside of the tabbing. I was running well with nothing on my back and smashing it in the gym. I was pretty certain my success in these areas was the only reason I hadn’t been RTU’d yet. But the instructors would only let me get away with that for so long. The clock was ticking for me – and I knew it. The undeniable fact was that I was showing no signs of improvement.

Every four weeks we’d be made to line up outside the corporal’s office. One by one we’d be called in. On the corporal’s desk there’d be two items. On the left there was the coveted maroon beret that paras call their ‘machine’. On the right there was a glass of sour milk. If the decision had been made to send you up to Catterick, you were told to touch the beret. If you’d not made it, you’d sniff the milk. I was getting sick of it. Every time, I was being told, ‘Middleton, smell the milk.’ And then, one week, I was waiting my turn when I saw Cranston exiting with his face lit up like fireworks night. He didn’t even have to say anything. It was obvious. Cranston had touched the maroon machine.

Meanwhile, up on Craphat Hill, practice wasn’t making perfect. The tabbing was getting harder, not easier. My feet were becoming badly damaged and, because everyone else was striding while I was running, my bergen was sliding from side to side against my lower and upper back. Everybody suffers from what they call ‘bergen burns’, but mine were on a different level. Across large swathes of my back my skin had pretty much worn away, so I’d spend my evenings carefully strapping my wounds with black tape. When I was running I simply tried to shut out the pain. What else could I do?

But there was one truly bright spot in my Pre-Para schedule. Most weekends I’d actually be able to get out of Aldershot. I’d leave the barracks and travel down to Portsmouth to stay with my nan, partly to get away from the squalor and the terrible food, partly to get away from Cranston and his pals. I didn’t want to burden nan with my problems, or spoil our time together by being negative, but I knew she was wondering why I was still around and not in Catterick because she’d ask these little probing questions that I’d have to bat away.

But then, one Saturday night, after months of punishment on Pre-Para, I sat down at the dinner table for my favourite meal of sausage, cabbage and mash and, forgetting myself, I accidentally winced in pain.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Are these sausages from the butcher? They’re a decent size.’

I tried to distract her with a bit more of my sausages talk, then I tried laughing it off, but I knew she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Reluctantly, I stood up, turned around and peeled my shirt up to show her. There were scabs, scars and bloody, weeping wounds under there. Whole layers of skin were missing.

‘Oh, darling,’ she said, trying to control her voice. ‘What are they doing to you?’

I pulled my shirt back down again and shrugged. ‘It’s what I want, Nan,’ I said.

‘I want to join 9 Para Squadron and this is what you have to do. It’s normal. It’s nothing that’s going to kill me.’

‘You don’t have to prove anything to anyone,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to be a paratrooper.’

‘Because I have to get my wings,’ I said with a shrug. I picked up my knife and fork again and began to attack my dinner. When I looked up, Nan’s eyes had turned bloodshot and wet.

That night, as I lay in bed, I thought about what she’d said. How could I explain why I wanted to earn my wings so badly? It was like trying to explain why green is green or why Cranston was a dick. It was obvious, wasn’t it? The Paras were the best. They were gods. Who doesn’t want to be a god? And it was more than that, too. It felt like my destiny, to wear those wings on my shoulder and the maroon machine and the Pegasus insignia that showed I belonged to 5 Airborne Brigade, of which 9 Parachute Squadron was a part, and to walk among those gods as an equal.

I hadn’t ever really questioned why I wanted it, nor whether or not it could happen. But I’d been on Pre-Para for months now and, if anything, it was getting harder. Perhaps, I thought, it just wasn’t going to happen. The lads back at base seemed to all be in agreement. And, you know, what would happen if I did decide to quit? It would be my business, and my business only. The reason I was coming last was simple – my legs weren’t long enough, and I couldn’t help that. Perhaps I’d be wiser just to accept it. I should listen to my nan. She’s been around for a while and knew a bit about the world. ‘Go to a normal engineer regiment,’ I told myself. ‘Stick to your strengths.’

The next morning I awoke feeling flat and tired, but relieved to have finally come to a decision. I gave Nan a hug goodbye and pulled my bag over my shoulder, now flinching openly at the pain.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said. ‘You’re right. I’m not built for it. It’s my legs. Nothing’s gonna change that, no matter how much I want to wish it away.’

I was expecting her to look pleased, but she just sighed. It was confusing. Had I disappointed her?

Back at the barracks the next morning it was more of the same. Out once again with the heavy bergen, eight miles of raw pain, all the way up Craphat Hill, dragging myself across the hellish Seven Sisters, pushing myself through what they called the ‘Hole in the Wall’, which involved crawling through a pit of stinking mud that was full of smashed glass bottles that civilians would throw into it, then squeezing through a narrow gap in a brick wall. As I slogged, I stewed over my nan’s reaction. I knew she had my best interests at heart, but I also felt that she thought I was better than that. What should I do? I couldn’t just chant a magic spell and put ten fucking inches on my legs.

I came last again, that day. It was my worst time ever. As I was catching my breath, alone by the wagon, one of the lance corporals beckoned me over. ‘Middleton, come here,’ he said. I staggered over to where he was standing. ‘Listen, lad, you’ve got the drive and will, nobody can take that away from you. It’s why you’re still here. But you’re too small. You’re not like the others. You haven’t got the build.’ There was nothing I could say to that but, ‘OK, Corporal.’

As the wagon bounced us back towards the barracks, I watched the mud track and military fencing pass by outside the canopy. I finally decided that that was it. They were obviously going to RTU me soon, and I might as well go out with dignity and save them the trouble. I imagined Cranston’s expression when he found out, that nasty grin. ‘You’re not like the others,’ the lance corporal had said. Not like Cranston? Not as good as him? I found myself filling with a sense of angry defiance. And then something odd happened. The angrier I felt, the more the pain in my back seemed to fade away. I remembered how I’d got through that first Basic Fitness Test by using my hatred of him as a source of energy. I focused on him, hard. I felt pumped. Violent. By the time the wagon pulled up, I was almost ready to ask the driver to turn around and take me back to Craphat Hill, so I could do the tab again.

Just by chance, another new intake arrived two days later. One of the boys happened to be slightly overweight, and this meant that the limelight, finally, was taken off me. It also meant that I didn’t come in last. As well as using my rage at Cranston to fire me up, I allowed myself to use someone else’s struggle as my strength. With each tab, from thereon in, I slowly became better and better. That improvement was one hundred per cent psychological. I started climbing the ladder again, getting faster and faster, closer and closer to the front. And before I knew it, there were probably two or three of us going on the next course, and it seemed clear I was going to be one of them.

That experience gave me a lesson I’ve never forgotten, and it’s one I still use regularly. Your enemy is fuel. He is energy. Hatred can be the most powerful motivator there is. In life you’ll always come across jealous and negative people, or people who simply don’t believe in you. Every single one of them is a Duracell battery. Plug them in. Give yourself that edge by using their own electricity against them. Success isn’t only the most satisfying form of revenge – it’s the only positive one there is.

But using your enemies like this can also be dangerous. I only truly learned this during my time in the Royal Marines, many years after my endless struggles up Craphat Hill. It was just before lunch on a sunny day in July, and I’d returned from a session on Woodbury Common military training area. I was outside my accommodation block removing the twigs, leaves and grass from my gillie suit, and was about to go back inside when a young guy I’d been chatting to a few days previously in the mess hall passed by.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t know. It’s going around the drill quarters. They’re planning the funeral back in the office. Right in the middle of it now. Didn’t get a name. I was wondering if you knew?’

Once he’d left I paced as quickly as I could to the Sniper Troop office and knocked on his door.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ I said. ‘But I’ve just heard that one of the lads has caught it up in Afghanistan. Is it true?’

‘I can’t say any names, Middleton,’ he said. ‘We haven’t released the news to his family yet.’

This was impossible. It was Lewis. He was a good friend. I’d got to know and trust him during my counter-terrorist sniper course, but everyone at Lympstone knew of him. He was unusually well-spoken, relentlessly positive and a bit kooky. It wouldn’t be unusual to see him walking through the accommodation blocks in rest periods practising his favourite hobby, which was juggling. Sometimes he’d be throwing sparkly balls around the air, sometimes knives. If you met Lewis in the street, you might guess that he was a lawyer or a kindly geography teacher. In fact, he was one of the most efficiently deadly men in the British services.

Of course, deaths like his were part of the deal. You heard about military people being killed in action all the time. But it was a shock to hear that one of our guys had caught it up. There was just something about being an operator that made you feel invincible. It sometimes felt as if we could dodge bullets. All I could do for the next few minutes was sit on the edge of my bed, looking at my phone. I wondered how it had happened. Enemy fire? An IED? A corrupt Afghan who’d been employed by the British military? There were plenty of stories of those flying about. Ten minutes later I stood up, brushed myself off and began preparing for the afternoon’s exercise. Because what else could I do?

Within the week, Lewis’s body had been repatriated. Ten days after I heard the news, I arrived at a huge, dark, stone cathedral for his funeral. He was sent off with full military honours, including a ten-gun salute and a ceremonial flyover by two Hawk jets after the service. I was invited to join the burial party too, about an hour and a half’s drive from the cathedral, and be one of the pall bearers. There were only ten of us there, including the family. I watched his wife and two daughters, aged eight and ten, stand beside the dark, damp, black hole in the ground. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head – their husband and dad was going in there. They read poems and managed to somehow hold themselves together. I was struck not only by their courage but by the endless depth of their love for their man who was now gone.

When the time came to finally say goodbye, the coffin was lifted into the air by ropes. I removed the metal stands from beneath it and guided it over the pit. Then, slowly, it was lowered in. Lewis’s family stepped forward to throw roses into the ground. They tossed in handfuls of dirt that clattered on top of the coffin. That was when it became too much. The daughters broke, sobbing desperately, their hands pressed to their faces, tears leaking out from between pale fingers. It was hard to know how they’d ever learn to live without him. Maybe they wouldn’t. Their despair was such that it felt like a fog that had escaped from their hearts and was enveloping all of us.

What affected me most was the bravery of Lewis’s wife, who steadfastly held it together for the sake of her children. When the ceremony was over, I approached her.

‘Lewis was an honourable man,’ I said. ‘If there’s anything that I or any of the lads can do, we’re always here.’

She gazed back at me emptily. I could tell she wasn’t really present, that the reality of what she was going through was simply so unbelievable that some protective instinct in her mind had removed her from the moment. Glassy eyed, she gave that generic answer, ‘Thank you, thank you.’

‘I want you to know that Lewis’s death is not going to go unanswered,’ I said.

With that, she clicked into focus and looked back at me directly. Suddenly present, she said simply, ‘Good.’

When I was out in Afghanistan, the loss of our friend rarely left my mind. He felt ever-present, pushing us forwards, our primary motivator. All I wanted was to get revenge for my pal and revenge for his wife and girls. The problem was, this hatred almost overwhelmed me. I could feel myself spiral into a mode of just wanting to kill everyone. All the people I met out there on patrol were to blame. Every local that showed even a hint of a threat or the slightest bit of negativity I wanted to aim and fire at. For a while I simply hated Muslims. The strange thing was, I’d also meet the loveliest Afghani families and be eating bread with them and cracking jokes, and I wouldn’t be thinking like that at all. But then, as soon as I’d left their compounds, I’d be back in the zone, thinking, ‘All right, you fuckers.’ I wanted to mow them all down.

Most people don’t understand hatred. The truth is we need it. Hatred is why we’re motivated to defend ourselves. Hatred of fascism and hatred of communism got us through the twentieth century with our values intact, just as hatred of radical Islamism and the terrorism it breeds are getting us through our problems today. Hatred is a natural human instinct. We have it for a reason. But it’s a dangerous tool that needs using with wisdom, strength and delicacy. You need the presence of mind to tap into it just enough that it serves you, but not so much that it twists you up and throws you into a dark place.

But that’s what started happening in Afghanistan. Lewis’s death had made it personal for everyone who knew him. The hatred it generated caused many of them to make bad decisions. When I got out there all I heard was, ‘If they’ve got a weapon on them, they’re a bad guy. Just take them out, even if they pose a minimal threat. Just do what you’ve got to do.’ I felt exactly like they did, but I didn’t want to be a bully with a weapon. When that mindset runs away with you, you’re in war crimes territory. I’m not judging any of them. I know how it feels. I’m not exaggerating when I say that, at times, I felt like a dog with bloodlust. Getting my head back under control was one of the toughest challenges of my military career.

It’s the kind of energy that can eat you from the inside. If you internalise your enemies too much, they can begin to obsess you to the extent that you become both defensive and aggressive, the kind of person nobody wants to be around. I met a character who personified this perfectly when I was filming Series 2 of SAS: Who Dares Wins at an old military base in the Ecuadorian jungle. Geoff was a satellite installer and former drug addict who’d been deported from Australia after some sort of violent incident. He’d also served six months in prison.

From the moment I first laid eyes on him, on morning number one, I knew everything about him that I needed to. All the contestants were lined up in formation in our makeshift parade square, which was surrounded with military buildings and corrugated roofs. I’d decided to welcome them into the challenge with the opposite of a motivational speech.

‘This environment is brutal,’ I said. ‘It’s hostile. It’s claustrophobic. It will chew you up and spit you out. This environment is enough to break most of you. If you fight it will fuck you up. Trust me. If I have to babysit any of you, we’ll just fuck you off. We want individuals who can look after themselves. You’re ours for the next nine days. Embrace it, gentlemen.’

As I was talking, I was checking out all their body language. Geoff’s attitude problem simply exploded out of him. Just the way he was standing told me he had a major problem with authority. He was a short guy and he was broad. When I began asking questions, the other lads would reply snappily with, ‘Yes, Staff!’ But when I questioned Geoff, all I got was, ‘Yep. Yep.’ Here, I realised, was the classic problem child. He was completely possessed by all those perceived enemies that he carried around inside him. They were controlling his every thought and action. He wasn’t using them as an energy – they were using him.

I decided to get straight in there and push his buttons. The ‘mirror room’ is what we called the converted shipping container where we carried out our interrogations. Contestants would be called in without warning. A black bag and goggles would be put over their heads and they’d be manhandled through a complex series of turns to completely disorientate them. The next thing they’d know, they’d be sitting in front of a table, on the other side of which would be me and another member of the directing staff.

On that very first evening I sent the order for him to see us. I was joined by a gifted former SAS operative, Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham.

‘There’s something quite unsettling about you,’ I told Geoff. ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it. You seem like quite an unpredictable character. I know a loose cannon when I see one. There’s a switch in you. And when it goes you can’t control it.’

Billy began probing into his past. It soon emerged that Geoff had been a drug dealer.

Now we were getting somewhere. Here was the real Geoff. It hadn’t taken long. Billy increased the pressure.

‘Did you ever calculate in your fucking stupid mind how many families’ lives you fucked up?’

Geoff took a sharp breath, dipped his head and ran his hand slowly over the top of it. This was it. He was breaking.

This guy was a hand grenade and he was seconds away from going off. The situation would need careful control. I knew from his size and his past – and from the masculine power that was tasing off him – that if he kicked off he was going to be a handful. I had to assert a bit of dominance. I rose from my seat and stood over him, quickly sending him a message: It’s probably best not to start anything because, if that happens, it’s not going to end nicely for you.

‘Relax,’ I told him. ‘Relax yourself. Why do you think we’re pushing your buttons? Calm it down. If you were caught in a hostile environment and you reacted the way you’ve just reacted, do you know what would happen to you? You’d get a bullet in the back of your head.’

What he didn’t realise was that none of this was necessarily an issue for me. It didn’t matter to me that he was a problem child. I didn’t even mind the attitude. I can work on these problems and even take great pleasure in rectifying them. What I didn’t know was whether he could help himself.

The fact is that the Special Forces are looking for men who are on that razor edge. A lot of us were – and are – just like Geoff. For many men of the SAS and SBS, if they’d taken one step to the left at a certain point in life they’d have ended up in prison. A lot of us were constantly teetering on the point of self-destruction. We could either control that self-destructive urge or just press the button – and often our finger was hovering just a millimetre above it. That was definitely true of me. The people in charge know full well that this dynamic exists within us. It’s the reason they want us, the reason we get results. It’s how we’ve passed Special Forces Selection. But they take you with their fingers crossed behind their backs, just hoping and praying that the button doesn’t get pressed.

We left Geoff to stew overnight on what had happened. The next morning he was late to the parade ground. The contestants were given a strict timing for breakfast, between 6 and 6.30, and they all had to go together. As they were eating, I inspected their accommodation. Someone had left their toothbrush and toothpaste on their bed, while everyone else had packed all their kit properly away. As soon as I saw it, I knew it had to be Geoff. He’d left me a gift. And I capitalised on it straight away.

When they filed back from breakfast, I stood outside their accommodation, blocking their way. Once they’d all gathered, I told them, ‘I want you to walk around in there and I don’t want you to touch anything. I just want you to inspect the accommodation and point at the bed that’s not right.’ They all saw it.

I knew he’d been raging all night and that this was going to tip him over the cliff.

‘You’ve just fucked up there, haven’t you?’ I told him. ‘What makes you so special? You think you’re special, do you? Right, everyone out on the parade ground.’

I got hold of a foam roll mat, of the type you use for camping, and instructed everyone to stand round it.

‘I want you all in the press-up position,’ I said. I pointed Geoff to the mat. ‘Come and lie down,’ I said. ‘Relax. Chill.’ But that he couldn’t deal with it.

‘Fuck you. You’re pissing me off now, fucking prick,’ he said, tearing his armband off and thus instantly ordering his plane ticket back to the UK.

The thing is, I’d only have made him lie on that mat for five minutes. And if he’d been man enough, I’d have decided that he was getting it and that I could work on him. I genuinely wanted to bring him back into the fold, but now I couldn’t. I decided to have a chat with him in the medical room as he was being checked over before his flight home. I could see he was still raging. I braced myself for a physical fight, sitting down lightly on the edge of a medical bed, my arms and legs tensed, primed and ready to spring into action.

‘You’ve got so much potential, but you’re a fucking hand grenade,’ I said. ‘You’re unpredictable, and that makes you unreliable. What frustrates me is that you’ve turned your life around. But you can turn it right back upside down again with the flick of a switch. You love your daughter. But you won’t be any good to her when you’re in the fucking nick.’

‘What it all boils down to is weakness,’ he admitted. ‘You know as well as I do. I thought if I can get through this I might actually be able to trust myself. But I don’t.’

He broke down in tears. I’d been Geoff’s enemy that morning. It was my gift to him. He should have used me. He should have shown me. But rather than draw energy from me, he’d allowed me to eat him up.

There’s one other situation in which I’ve learned that it’s useful to build yourself through confrontation, and that’s in conditions of extreme pain. You have to learn to cope with pain on the battlefield, where you may well find yourself having to walk on a broken ankle or with a leg that’s got a bullet in it – or be killed. I’ve learned that it’s useful to make your own body the enemy, to focus on what’s causing you grief and fire fury back at it. I’ll have a voice going around my head: ‘You fucking think you hurt, do you? I’ll fucking show you.’

Not long ago I was invited to a team-building event with 30 Commando, down at Stonehouse Barracks in Plymouth. As part of the day I’d agreed to take part in a morning of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. But the week before I’d broken the big toe on my right foot. There was no way I was going to pull out of my commitment, but twenty minutes after I started grappling on the mat I felt my toe break again. It was agony. And I knew I was going to be rolling around for another two hours. So I separated myself from it. I turned my toe into my enemy and went into battle with it. ‘You want fucking pain do you? You don’t know what fucking pain is. Try this.’ At the end of every round I’d surreptitiously smash it into the ground or walk up to the wall and, when no one was looking, kick it. ‘I’ve got a job to do and you fucking think you can stop me doing my job, do you? Right, have some of this.’ Pain is an aggressive feeling and, to be on top of it, you have to get aggressive with it right back.

Most people have never been to their limits, so they don’t know what lies there. I’ve been to my limits and beyond, so I know my body. I know what it can do. I know I can get to a point where my mind and body are screaming, ‘Fucking stop!’ and I’ll reply, ‘Fucking stop, you cunt? Watch this.’ Pain isn’t telling you what to do. Pain is asking you a question. All you have to do is say no.

The most surprising thing about the three-week P Company course in Catterick was that, after the misery of Pre-Para, it was a breeze. It was three weeks of races, assault courses and trainasium height training, which involved things like walking across the tops of thirty-foot poles. I loved it. But I wasn’t quite a paratrooper yet. Because I’d not yet done my ‘jumps course’, I was what they called a ‘penguin’ – a bird that can’t fly. But the jumps course wouldn’t be a challenge in the way that Pre-Para was. It wasn’t something that people ever really failed. On the contrary, I couldn’t wait to get on it.

So I returned to Aldershot from Catterick feeling as if I’d truly earned my maroon beret. Perhaps because my struggle had been so great – it was the first time I’d really been tested – I’d never had more confidence. But I was spending my days with some of the same people who’d watched me struggling so badly. People like Cranston. He’d classed me as a loser when I’d been there before. I hoped that now I’d returned, and I’d proved him and everyone else wrong, it would be a new start. I, for one, wouldn’t hold the past against him.

On that first day back we went on an eight-mile troop run. I was comfortably at the front when two of the lads sped up behind me, a lance corporal and Cranston. ‘What are you doing at the front?’ said the lance corporal. I pushed on, trying to put some distance back between us, but Cranston threw his foot out, kicking my leg right behind the knee. I tumbled forward, falling into a ditch, the left side of my face taking the brunt.

‘You think you’re the fucking man, but you’ve just come back from P Company,’ he shouted over his shoulder as he sped down the track. ‘Fucking sprog.’

I pushed myself back on my feet and spent the rest of the run in the centre of the pack. I was fuming. Be at the back, and they single you out. Be at the front, and they single you out. I’d joined the army to excel. I’d imagined I was going to be surrounded by like-minded people. But it was beginning to seem as if the only place you could really get on was right here in the middle.

And so that’s what I did. I sat back. What was the point in pushing myself when I wasn’t even going to be allowed to get there? All that mattered to them was that I was a sprog. That was the be-all and end-all. There was an iron hierarchy in place that had nothing to do with skill and everything do to with gang-law and favouritism. The people at the top were the ones who’d been there for longer or who had the right friends. They were ‘the boys’. They’d go down the pub and drink and fight, and that’s how it was all decided. It was all stitched up.

LEADERSHIP LESSONS

Make your enemy your energy. The fact of the matter is, becoming a leader often means creating enemies. It’s a fight to get to that top spot, and not everyone is going to be happy that you’ve beaten them. They’re going to turn their resentment into negativity that they’ll fire at you in an attempt to bring you down. You have a choice. Allow that negativity in, and let it obsess you and eventually poison you. Or turn it around. If you’re smart, these enemies become a gift – a battery that never runs out.

A lesson is a lesson. No matter how it comes to you, even if it’s in an apparently negative package, take that lesson as a positive. Of course I didn’t enjoy having to pour freezing water over my head over and over again that morning. And I was unhappy when I realised none of the lads had told me the correct procedure for filling the bottle. But I’ve never forgotten the lesson I was taught: attention to detail. If you get the small things wrong, big problems will find you.

These lessons never stop. If you’re paying attention, you’ll have a learning moment every day. Make a habit of spending two minutes before turning your lights out, every night, working out what the lesson of the day has been. Go to sleep with the satisfaction that, having now learned it, you’ll wake up as a better version of yourself than you’ve been the previous day.

There’s always a route around your weakness. We all have things about us that we can’t change. A part of the reason I struggled at Pre-Para was the length of my legs. Rather than throw my hands up, which I very nearly did, I realised I could compensate in another area. We all have reasons to make excuses for failure. Most people use them. Be the exceptional person – find the route around.

MAKE YOUR ENEMY YOUR ENERGY