Andy McNab | The Cambridge Union

evening everyone and welcome to the Cambridge Union Society thank you for joining us as we all aware this evening we're honored to be joined by Andy McNab the former SAS operative who raised to prominence with his book brave 2-0 and he'll be giving about half an hour speech remember you'd be an opportunity for you to ask questions and buy and get a book signed afterwards if you would like can I just say for obvious reasons there is a specially strict no photography and filming rule tonight anyone caught with a phone out will be asked to leave immediately so we really appreciate it if you could stick to those rules um said well if all of those talk for about half an hour had got into the military what happened during my time there and what eventually happen when I got out you know getting involved off the scene writing book working on film TV newspapers that sort of thing joining the army wasn't exactly what I thought I was going to be doing um when I was 16 I was in juvenile detention I was in what was called the bookstore system which the government at the time decided that everybody old juveniles who committed offenses needed what was called a short sharp shock so you'd go into these systems called Boston's between four to six months and they're basically just get shouted out a lot really it wasn't much much going on so what was happening there was organizations that were coming into the portal system to try and get them out as an experiment about social mobility and one of those organizations was the army the British Army so used to coming to the ball stores and recruit boy soldiers so I was about three months into my my sentence and I was in North London a bookstore in North London and I come from from South London I might as well being you know might be on Mars I didn't know where I was you know I never ever had been north of the river anyway and it was guys from places from Leeds and Mansfield I didn't even know where they were so all of us out what we call our sentence intake so about the throat it's called a bit it's got a bit sore this week all of us from out 47 of us from our sentence intake we got shouted into a lecture hall where we saw this fantastic recruiting film it was a it was a helicopter pilot in a small to see a helicopter called a scout with a perspex dome you know bubble at the front and he's flying very very low over the beaches of Cyprus he's got a pair of shorts on and a t-shirt and as he's flying he's waving up the girls girls are waving at him and the recruiting sergeant said who wants to be a helicopter pilot in the army so all of us naturally put our hands up because the idea was if you get accepted into the army you didn't have to go back into the detention system until you got your place your time to join the military so that very day we was all taken off to Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham again didn't have a clue where it was and for three days of selection and to find out where you would fit in the army and certainly reversal I didn't need three days they knew on the first easy we've been probably the first morning that none of us were going to be helicopter pilots Cooper's case if we could just about do our boot laces up there learn anything else so we all ended up in the infantry and I went into a light infantry regiment called the roll green jackets which are now called the rifles which is a light infantry brigade and as a 16 year old as a boy soldier I went to what was called a an infantry junior leaders battalion and the idea of these IG lbs was to train you for a year to be an infantryman so when you rent your battalion is fully trained but at the same time to teach you to be the future leadership of the army so I've got they're part of part of the juvenile detention system the borstal system had different regimes and they were trying out different things all the time so the place I Wayne we had crew cuts and we used to wear have you seen dad's army that you know that sort of old Second World War uniform we used to wear the blue one Royal Air Force one in the in the in the book so that was in itself what I've cracked it already got a haircut I've already had a uniform on so I'm halfway there I got to I GOP they took another layer off and I'd start shaving everyday as a 16 year old and not only I didn't start shaving properly until I was 19 but I was 16 faithful as its I'm cutting them off every morning trying to shave it they know what I was doing lots of shower in lots of hollering about jumping and all that sort of stuff you'd expect what's happening in an infantry training environment and I thought don't particularly like this army business because if I had stayed in borstal I'd only do two more months and that would have been my sentences and it was exactly a bit like borstal but it was really after the three-month period what was called the bedding in period where for me my life changed and many many people there as well because we all got showered out of their block and we got marched to the army Education Centre and I didn't even know the army had teachers I didn't know they had you know a school we've got put in classrooms no God help 24 classroom or whatever and by now as you know 16 year olds in the army we know we just sat there and shut up so we're just sitting there knowing there was no sort of teacher no instructor in the room until the world's oldest man came in and now he was sort of young it was early forties but to me as a 16 old the world's oldest man came in and he was a captain free free tips on the shoulder he's a guy done 22 years in the Army as a noncommissioned officer and risen to the rank of a regiment Sol major and has taken a commission and he chose instead of going back to the infantry to join the army education chat centre and teach the likes of me when he got into the classroom we're still not saying anything he didn't say anything he just walked around the class and so he got to the window and he pointed out the window and we were on the edge of the camp and there's the barbed wire and the fence and all that sort of thing that you would expect in a camp and he said like everybody the other side of the fence everybody out there thinks you're thick of [ __ ] because you're in here because you're in the infantry but you're not you know you're not thick you are uneducated from today that all changes and it was only then that I'd learn I had the numerous in illiteracy of an 11 year old and unfortunately that still hasn't changed in the British Army the average is a fact the average age of an adult infantry recruit joining going to what's called the infantry training center in Catterick near Darlington is of an 11 year old and British military education the free services is the biggest adult education in Europe for this system because they've got to take those sort of people that have fallen through the cracks and educate them to workings in the services so as I was inviting I was nearly 17 and used to buy the Sun newspaper sorry page freeze easy enough it's like well it's news in briefs now so there's a few words isn't it but used to turn on to the on sort of back pages and read the spool and there were words they would never understand and I used to make them up because now I write for papers like a son you know I'm there I'm their security expert so yeah what do you want to know Oh quickly look on Google and then right at it but also rightfully out some some other newspapers American you expect Wall Street Journal and and you know UK and the American version of Financial Times and Sun papers the one thing that all papers have in common is that despite distortions is that someone with the reading age of a 12 year old must be able to read it and understand what's being said and that wasn't happening to me as as I was nearly 17 but there it it started to improve and it was the place within a week of going to the army education system that I to go into now we changed my life the first book I read was a book called Janet and John book 10 which was a series of books that were written for primary school kids and obviously Jana and John book 10 was was at the top of a range so you'd be 10 or 11 to go through for that series and it's Energon there was lots of pictures and just straight paragraphs on each page you know Janet and John brother and sister went around you know climbing trees not dead dog and you know that sort of stuff and there was a vocab at the book at the back so I had it for a week we then at individually go up to this educate and read the book they say right close the book they said right remember the feeling of reading for the very first time a book and closing it because every time you read you're going to gain more knowledge and every time you gain more knowledge you get more power to do what you want to do as opposed to doing what everybody else wants you to do because you can do it on your own terms and for me it was it became almost evangelical this point of I'm not thick I'm uneducated and actually if a gillen education it's going to work what I didn't realize at the time was that when you join the army whether you can be the best corporal in the world you don't get Serkan certain academic qualifications you're going nowhere the same as when you go for the to become a sergeant so there was lots of incentive to get an education so a left eye gel B I went to my battalion and I never served in the green jackets for eight years and the war that time is in Northern Ireland and for certainly for an eighteen-year-old soldier that fantastic you know we used to go between four or five months every year you've got fifty pence extra a day very exciting and soft wallet paper in Northern Ireland because the army in the UK used to give you that tracing paper stuff and as a boy soldier we used to have signs in the cubicles of the washrooms and used to say remember three sheets only one up one down one shine and all of a sudden now we could have all this soft toilet paper is fantastic save up about a thousand pounds every tour come back get ripped off buying a second-hand car the dealers in these garrison towns so used to hand paint these things you know keep together but no one really cared you know because they would fall apart they would you know you had crasher they get stolen so nobody bothered with tax or insurances the things were you know they would die within about six months that didn't matter because you're going to go back to Northern Ireland save up another thousand pounds use all the software paper do the same again so I've done that for about four years no money at the end of it and certainly no car at the end of it so I thought I've got to start sawing myself out and eventually became a sergeant in the in the infantry in the green jackets and it was in that fallback going for the Special Air Service and we could be people - interesting that wait wait for anything we can do that during question and answer and in fact I don't know the answer I'll tell you I'll tell you it's a secret or something so kill me but sir so I went for a search on Special Air Service I found the very first time about 40% of people going through actually affected getting fail on that on that on that first first attempt got in on my second attempt and then you join you lose all your rank so I was a sergeant I've now become a private soldier again what called trooper and served in Special Air Service for ten years and done all those things you know what we've died you know we you read about all you hear about really apparently Ross came when he was playing especially a service soldier I don't know hold his breath for six hours under war and fought with knives and we do all that sort of stuff on the counterterrorism team we don't so would serve times on the counterterrorism team obviously all the guys in the black equipment and the the sort of yard and I'm coming through windows and all that sort of stuff I went back to Northern Ireland first for a year with what's called the troop which is the Special Air Service contingent of that of that campaign and for me it's fantastic because as a soldier your ups are there in Kevlar our honour and a helmet and patrolling and yo getting shot at and things furniture and all of a sudden I was there with this know Michael Jackson 1978 sort of permed be bushy hair I was driving a Peugeot 205 turbo in civilian clothes for a year was fantastic they came back from that spent a lot of time in Africa a lot of the colonial states that were given into bendin sin 60s you know that the regimes that we thought were going to be pretty good were pretty there was internal conflicts there were different defense agreements between those states so sometimes we would support the rebels we fought whatever better sometimes we would support the government because we thought we were better we were we were pretty fickle so fan-out had to learn Swahili which turned out to be a waste of time because everybody spoke English and supported Manchester United yep I thought that's all I wanted to know was about Manchester United and so a lot of time in in in Africa and then got involved in what's called the first strike policy in Colombia at that time certainly when the manufacturer of cocaine the process was changed to use baking powder which was obviously cheaper to produce of quicker to produced cocaine that once the Colombians discovered that an offshoot of using baking powder was crack cocaine which was obviously cheaper and and more addictive and by that time the American society was starting to crumble certainly at the lower end of it because of this epidemic and certainly the Brits were worried about that as well whether we're going to get the social decline in the UK because of crack cocaine so the CIA had an operation called first strike in Colombia at that time to try and hit the drug manufacturing plants in a rainforest which are pretty low-level things you know the techniques are quite sophisticated by the way they you know physically produce it it was it was very new area that size and size of this the largest one would be twice the size and that would be a big one cut out the jungle camouflage so they could be used they could be burnt and people move on the idea is if we find the drug manufacturing plants Detroit destroy them assaults but even more importantly kill the people that produce it there mainly North Americans and Europeans that could slow the amount of of certainly crack cocaine coming into the sort of two countries I'm used to spend a lot of time in a rainforest with the anti-narcotics please who you know didn't really want to be there there are only about $100 a month their families are getting target whilst they're away they're getting killed when they go home on leave so when we used to find one of these places and get set to do an attack in the rain forest there's to pick the coca leaf you know it grows it's an indigenous plant it grows at certain elevation and whilst they're on patrol they will just pick the leaf wrap it up in sugar and improperly in their mouths as if it is chewing tobacco so the night 48s through having Hold'em littering some cases just a couple of hundred meters away in the rainforest from where this drug manufacturing plant is to move them into what was called start lines where they would be for the attack and then obviously they don't want to do it so by the time we'd get them to the start line you know they're doing Michael Jackson moon dancing it's a shooting at pink elephants because they're totally off their heads which would compromise the operation so we literally at the take all that coca leaf off from the sugar and even their ammunition the night before get them on the start line and then put their magazines on the teeth you know to start the the attacks and obviously always wanting to get these attacks in by Thursday night so the helicopters could pick us up and take us to Bogota for the weekend of course which is much yeah just as important as the war on drugs so I took to work back in Northern Ireland in an organization called foreign intelligence group and for what's called 49 or the debt and what they as in the detachment what is is it is a group of people that their sole task was to identify active service units of nationalist terrorist organizations the Provisional IRA a national or Irish Liberation Army those sort of groups they work very much in the cell system much like today's terrorists thousand and even the French Resistance did so you might only know one other member of your SAS you you won't know where your weapons are where your bomb-making equipment is you don't know what your next job is until you need to know so if we can identify one member we follow them we coerce the people that are around them find out information we then because what we're trying to do is join the dots of an a issue unless we've got join those dots we as we do that trying to identify a weak member of the Asian because what we'll do then is then we will turn him into a source an informer and there's many ways you could do that you first of all we see if he's got a weakness it may be drugs alcohol gambling heavily in debt those sort those sort of weaknesses if it hasn't got weakness sometimes we invent them we we give them certain sort of sexual perversions and we join two clubs in Amsterdam all that sort of stuff so we've got a pack if you like to present to show that that you know he's it's not a who seems it that he is and hopefully where they can blackmail him into doing that or he may have a a member of his family that our identities mother may may knee cancer care and we can guarantee we can get his mother to the front of the queue whatever it took to get the weaker member a source I'm all we do basically kidnap them get them in the back of the car we drive them out out the city we operate in Dehradun another guy from beast one twenty two special ourselves and we would then do our pitch if you like to the guy and the pitch won't be done by us because I've seen tell by my voice I don't come from Derry I come from South London so you see Special Branch that was good man special bar that again Special Branch officers from undercover officers from from from there in it sells so the reason why they do it it's there's always a restriction on photography isn't something with Iraq and all that sort of stuff it's to do with working with these guys it's still there and in fact two of them still still working there so we do the pitch hopefully get a source and that would then get that a issue under if you like the security forces belt because what it was all about was stopping soldiers getting killed as you know soldiers you know as I was as eighteen nineteen twenty walking around you know out today in body armor they the ones who were taking casualties you know wasn't us you know we you know we we're driving around in fast cars and living in safe houses it was a young squaddies on the on the ground that were getting killed and it was all about making sure you kept them get them safe about the six-year point in time and special air service by then I've been promoted we've gone through the ranks again and I was the troop sergeant of my troop cemetery which was the Air Assault troop of B squadron and the Gulf War had stayed Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait we thought we weren't going to become involved in that war because we were on the counterterrorism team again you know we was with Ross Kemp underwater knife fighting or where he does we've all the black neuron but what happened the counterterrorism team got out or got Capshaw and half of the squadron was sent to make my squadron half of ice water we were sent to Saudi and we started to plan and prepare to do the classic Special Forces what called Green options the you know in uniform heavy weapons that sort of thing duck yep I've got gone lost now my kind lives of supply lines of communication no sort of thing so my troop which was the Air Assault troop our plan or the plan we will be diamond we were planning and preparing to jump into a power station to the southeast of Baghdad that supplied the the supply grid to that area in the city because before the air war started there's going to be this big wave of air attacks knocking out the grids in the city in the water supply all that sort of stuff but they weren't too sure where the turbines were well we knew where the turbines were there weren't too sure that they'd be able to get them so the to the turbines as an air attack so what had to be was a hand so we were going to fly in and we were going to jump from 400 feet and a static line you know you hooked up it's that traditional sort of jump out and the parachute opens up problem with that it takes 200 feet for the canopy to fully deploy you have all your equipment in your burger in your backpack and that is dangling from your parachute at the back attached by hooks and a nine meter line so the theory is you should be jumping our canopy deploys sort yourself out pull your hooks and equipment dangles below you and then you know you parachute and jump in at night you hear your bergen drop and then you get ready to go basically called accept the landing you learn how to you know parachute rolls landing force and all that but nobody does them you just land like a bag of rubbish at night you know just it's just accept the landing so but jumping at 400 feet you have got no time for that so as soon as you get out all you got to do is start thinking about banging out your your hook so your bergen drops and if you've got twists where you just got to try and kick them out because you've got no reserve because you wouldn't be able to use a reserve so we were getting you know sort of getting a bit worked up about that so before well we look we're looking at twenty percent casualties just going in to this thing just by nature of operations everything was cancelled because Saddam Hussein start a fire Scud missiles into Israel trying to bring Israel into the war and because the Alliance their theory was the alliance with the Arab nations would collapse because no Arab nation is going to fight alongside Israel against another Arab nation so all of the special air service and a third of the Allied air force everything was retasked to go and find scuds so I was given the job of taking a eight-man foot patrol to the northwest of Baghdad to try and find a fiber-optic cable that was sending the information of where and when to fire these scouts from their headquarter element in Baghdad to the Scud teams in the Western Desert and a theory was keep that line of communication cut the scuds will be sort of sitting there twiddling their thumbs whilst the rest of the Special Air Service are out we'll find them and destroy them whether physically themselves or bring in fast tech support fine we do know where the where the fiber or object cable was exactly where and we didn't really know what to do when we found it whether we blow it up or read by we weren't so sure didn't know what to do but the idea was to get out there find it and cut it and so off we went but we didn't find it and in fact we compromised on the operation and that's a head towards Syria which was the closest country with a friendly embassy that were going to take us which would be the American or the British embassy and they're called war RVs and what you do you get to those embassies you don't knock on the door they won't let you in you know make sure you have another weapon jump over a fence and cuddle a tree to show you're not a threat and then you've got a system of code words and passwords to get you through it for a system as we went to Syria pursued by body Iraqi military free were killed for captured myself included and only one made it over Syria and eventually to the the British Embassy and then he got filled back to the Brit lines in in in Cyprus so the four of us spent time in both interrogation centers in in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib prison which I didn't know at the time but obviously it's well known now because of the American abuse of of Iraqi prisoners during the last Gulf War served another three years after the the the Bravo to Zurich experience and Bravo two zero simply a radio call sign is the second patrol of B squadron Bravo two zero and this time I went to a group called revolutionary warfare wing there's two wings in the inter Special Air Service you've got counter-revolutionary warfare wing and they're part of that is you know operations like Northern Ireland the debt the counterterrorism sea know sort of things where you're trying to stop things there's another group that have much more fun because their job is to start things up and that's called revolutionary warfare wing so I spent my last three years there starting fights rivaling to analysts of them is fantastic and it was during this time I was approached by a private military company to go back to Colombia because the American operation they're the CIA operation stops being called first strike it was being handed out to private enterprise it was going to be called Plan Colombia and some brick and American companies had that contract and so there was Brits and Americans who would be an approach to see if they want to do that job says about 12 of us got out the special air service and getting ready it was then when I got the approached by the military to write Bravo two zero I thought I'll give it a go it took three months to write I feel like this writing business is easy three months sent it to the publishers and immediately I sent you back me said it's rubbish I'm hot as ever it's too dry because what I done this last three years is do debriefs presentations to different organizations different attack military academies so in fact what I've done is present a military debrief so I was told to read a book called touching the void by Joe Simpson that I haven't seen the film there is a film I haven't seen it so don't don't ruin the the book but I said if you can get the sense of place and the emotion that Simpson puts into his book then it might work so I read the book I still do now still do now it's just fantastic the way that he can you know he explains no even the numbness of his fingers trying to manipulate rope and the emotion of cutting down rope where he knows it's friends on the other end and his friends going to fall down no off the mountainside the way let's describe his fantastic so it took about four months actually to do that with this sort hundred and ten thousand words that I already had and book was published I was back in in Colombia working for this private military company the publishers rang I said do you know what this book he's doing alright and and in fact what it became was the biggest selling war book of all time around the world it still is and I said do you fancy doing another one what would you think give us a ticket I'll be back tomorrow and that's how the next phase really happened for me getting involved it in in in books and film because when I came back I got involved in a film called heat I don't have people saying it's Al Pacino Robert De Niro sort of automatic weapons downtown Los Angeles it's fantastic seven months in Los Angeles working on this on this on this film and in fact I got awarded this this award in in Los Angeles the most the most realistic gun playing film or song like that I got a phone call I said right we're going to send you tickets and you come over you get this beer cut last great it never happened because three days before that the first bank of America in Los Angeles got hit exactly the same as the film guys in body armor automatic weapons and when the police followed up and went to the house where they've been planning this thing my books were there posters of the film and nine policemen got shot during the rate so I was on the phone to the the the guys in Los Angeles it's not going to happen is it there ain't no except but can I still come over so got the tickets no that was it so that never really happened and then started getting involved with more pre-production of film in some of the Jason Statham films they did which are purely sort of action films Black Hawk Down those sort of bigger stories as opposed to action is more importantly Black Hawk Down is a story as opposed to an action film the way that it is it's perceived and working in pre-production of that and then carrying on right in the books and Nick Stone series of books which is a guy who's out especially a service and also it gets involved every year it gets involved in events where it's trying to get out and it's always in there in the first-person narrative the the the problem with that is that the everything's got to come to the character for him to decide what's going on as opposed to the new character which is the new book outside called red notice which is Tom buckingham who's a serving member of the Special Air Service in fact it was called Tom Mullen but the Americans said that action he didn't sound British enough so he's now Tom Buckingham so it's nothing that's in third-person narrative and that's great for me because I was brought up on TV and film and you know I had no history of reading so for me writing books is always a series of pictures it's always prologue free acts and an epilogue and the and the the chapters are actually the commercial breaks in my mind it's a series of pictures and paragraphs are scenes so to write in the third person which is for the third time the first time I've done it was a fantastic experience and I'm I'm thinking about moving in that direction anyway just check out I'm going to shut up so my throat's going and I'm up on time it's a say I just open it up to questions and our I'll keep on answering them till someone says shut up that's it I set them off oh there's always one when you're in Northern Ireland what did you do if someone did not accept your pitch there's not a lot we could do there's not a lot we could do and in some cases you in some case you've quite admire that they wouldn't accept it in fact ever there was one guy that we could he dealt with a lot of youth groups it's one guy that we set up in a way that the he possibly had a relationship with with 16 year olds and he said okay expose it I don't care because no one will believe you and actually looking back no one would and there's nothing we could do and then you actually admire the guy for doing that yeah but it's not as if he was going to go back and tell everybody he's been lifted and Special Branch have made a pitch to him because no one's going to believe him that he said no so therefore we and obviously it would be explained to him that you know if he repeats what's been going on that evening you know it would not bloom and be trouble from us if we trouble from the opposition so therefore the system works actually quite well but they were on the the minority of the people where you would pitch or you would do something you would manipulate a situation to get them in nine out of ten times sources were quite easy to do because it would be drugs debt gambling those sort of everyday sort of vices where there were secrets and nine out of ten times a source will become a source for something as little as 80 pound a week because you can't give them more than they would naturally sustain in their lifestyle you can't give them 5,000 pounds though we'd never have 5,000 pounds in their life so therefore you can't do that so you only give them what they can sustain some cases it would be 30 40 pounds a week not a lot but it would feed or it would pay for whatever the addiction or whatever the problem is in their life and that was all--no concerned about but a guys are saying no yeah you'd come back and go well okay fair one you'd sort of a mantra because it's got say you know when it when I get lifted off the street they don't know what's going on it's a lot of pressure on them you know that you know they're in the middle of nowhere and sometimes we bring a couple of fugiens over as well and they always will either fed up then they say yeah a couple of fugiens just looking on all the time and we make them put our s there get them to put special air service berries on the other guys from the squadrons and for genes from squadrons so even that was even more intimidating but someone seen it but that was part of the game yeah that's why they call players in accord the enemy they call players thank you you mentioned her the way that you have occluded to the army in the way the so again I'm sorry you spoke about how you alluded to the army and the way that you were obviously it worked out very well and clearly it was a good thing to do do you think there it was slightly underhand the way they just took these people from very very disadvantaged background and said you could be a helicopter pilot who can attract girls and then possibly wasn't best there wasn't necessarily the fairest way of recruiting people you know not a choice it's the way to recruitment goes I think that it's not as if within the following day you know you're going to you know no one makes you join the army when you turn up with the equivalent Sutton Coldfield now you know the way that the military is portrayed it's all about getting the trade and then Experion experience but it's you know you go into the supermarket you buy a chocolate bar it's exactly the same the experience now wonderful it's going to be for the realities is a bar chocolate when you're joining the army you will you know you get to a point what very quickly within the first three days of the selection process where you know you can be and that's up to you and even when you join you can get out during that first six months it's no big problem at all so no I don't think it's any sick anything cynical in that not at all because there's there's always cut offs unfortunate as as a as a junior leader once you pass that six months point you was committed for six years because of the investor like any business they put a certain amount of money to train you so they want an investment we want to get that bad investment out so as a junior leader you out sign off for six years and that was the only if you like downside of it as certainly is a 60 year old you know six years seem like a lifetime anyway but it just went like that now I don't think it's anything cynical about it at all people are very aware while they join you know we we've been in you know sort of you know post 9/11 Wars now for many you know over a decade now so people are aware of what what they're going into I'm saying yes I don't know there's there's the mic yes um so I guess over your time in the military you've had to kill some people how does it feel to kill someone called blood and how do you feel afterwards um I don't think it isn't cold but I think that the you know there's of course during the time in the green jacket so they've killed people in Special Air Service off kill people I don't think enemy anything's been in cold blood there's been some of it's been remotely obviously because by definition what you want to do is everything as far away from the threat as possible that's why we have long-range weapons and all that sort of stuff to stop conflict being physical the more gap you've got the better yeah good I don't feel bad actually it's um a giving example the first person I killed was when I was nineteen and it was a guy called Paita Mac ivenna and he was a terrorist I was a 19 year old squaddie you know I just said young like walking streets that sort of thing and I my fault I walked into an ambush turn the corner and it was six guys there were no weapons and all that sort of stuff so we had what was called a cabbie there was no system to it there was no organization because it was quite maybe from here to the wall so everybody was scared I'm scared they're scared everybody scared everyone's got guns everybody knows we've got fire room but actually we might get hit so we had a cabbie and you just fire everything and everyone I've been in the army since or six things I was about three years I've been in the army I know my weapon drills I can change magazines I can do all that sort of stuff quite slickly but when you're in a contact and you're flapping you run out of them and she trying to get another magazine or it's not the same as doing it in in training after that event I killed this this guy Panama governor he was only about six or seven months older than me and I shot another two guys as well so they're you know they're wounded and all that sort of stuff after the event that was the first kill of that tour of the tour of my battalion Northern Ireland if you've got to kill or an a.1 arrest there was an incentive to do that because you've got two weeks extra leave at the end of the tour so you left two weeks before they left said it was great because it's called a rip a relief in place which is a nightmare where patrols have literally got to replace each other on the ground and then you leave and get a helicopter and you know you don't see your kit for three weeks because it's all over the place so I left two weeks before that because we've got this this this this this this this kill and so there was if there was sort of a good moment for everybody you know but actually what it couldn't tell anybody was that was scared and I was I was very scared because it was in that environment where you have lots of sort of you know 19 20 21 year old young men you know we're all major right we've got helmets all that sort of stuff but I was scared but I couldn't tell any more I thought I couldn't tell anyone so I was immature too immature to understand that you it's natural it was only one who got into Special Forces honour honour my very first operation which was in Southeast Asia that squadron had already been effort a number of months and I joined them as the new boy and there was quite a large contact and we got back into the patrol base couple of days later and you got you know senior NCO sergeants who had been in Special Forces for 16 17 years sitting down saying I didn't like that that got me flapping you know they were scared but everybody by that was they were mature enough to be able to talk about it and what I've learned you know well I look very quickly well being scared is quite natural because it brings everything into focus and it's almost sort of like a survival instinct and the people who say they're not scared of liars or they're mentally deficient they shouldn't be doing the job anyway so it's not as if it's you know going back to the way that you know the question was asked it's not as if it's in cold blood it's not as if you know I've laid awake thinking about it but it's not as if you know put a notch into the belt or whatever you know the rifle butt or whatever it is that you know I'm supposed to do it's just part and parcel of what goes on and nine out of ten times you're doing it because they're trying to do it to you you know in some cases not in some cases you are you're ambushment the idea is what's called fire patrol and you're out there to kill them but the job spec of the infantry is to close with in close contact and destroy the enemy that's the job of the infantry to kill people so it is to trying to put it in a more realistic sense it's not oh my god the drama of it that's what it soldiers get paid to do and if they don't like it it could always get out this is it's not a problem with that yes there are yeah there are people who cannot deal with and they've left this people who couldn't deal with it and I suffering post-traumatic stress disorder yes there are but you know but that is the fact that that that is the job unfortunately you know some people do do okay with it and get over those those problems something we don't often talk roughly about 15 percent of the population will suffer post-traumatic stress at some varying degree because of some traumatic incident obviously it's magnified a bit more if you're in the if you're in the army certainly is last decade so therefore that's why it's very prevalent in in the media you know that soldiers with post-traumatic stress the vast majority of people actually survive that quite well and in fact it's 20 percent of those cases that actually improve because of a traumatic event there's the opposing side of post-traumatic stress is an improvement in the you know not in the you know excitement fantastic but actually the the the events or the traumatic event is seen as an advantage rather than a disadvantage that's okay cannot you give me you know sorry to monopolize you but do you know how many people live killed in yep I'm not going to tell you okay you see I'm fighting again naturally pointing but I don't know if it's going to happen oh it is no Wars changed for the better you know Wars change for the better because of of of weaponry and then the way of thinking about weaponry what you're trying to do continuously is have standoff so if you look at from the very basic soldiers on the ground for Afghanistan pub something else that I do and work for the mo D I'm on the board of the private military company now and we have contracts with the British government American government and we do we do stuff with their different Defense Department's it was 85 was in Afghanistan the last time was this March and April in there in Helmand with the Brits down down there even though that low level what we're trying to do is get weapons that if you're the Taliban and you're firing at me well you've got you know salt rifles may be effective if you're good 300 meters all right you might have RPGs coming out for about 700 meters you know and I'm thinking right I've got a big gun yet that can fire at you from 1,200 meters and they're called 50 Cal machine guns I've got general-purpose machine guns or effective and get a couple of them thousand meters so therefore we can be sitting here firing down at you we can be brewing tea and the lads could be killing you and you're trying to fire us all they do is come boom and they're for sure exactly the same you look at the Baloch resi we're the reason why we were so good because we had long bows we had a better trajectory we had better range as opposed to you know the French actually we're Italian a crossbow guys first of all the range wasn't long enough and secondly if they took so long to reload so as we advanced the bowmen could keep on firing and firing firing a great distance so you can fire all day at me and you're not going to hit make some up here's I've got a better weapon so you extend that from the infantry you extend that to drones which we've got thousands of now what Americans got thousands where we've started getting to our hundreds and so officer we were very very smaller force and we'd never get that magnitude of weaponry and the idea a drone is that you can have remote conflict there's many problems with that but actually if you're looking at the fact of saving soldiers lives on the ground I'm all for it so obviously they got work on information so there will be soldiers on the ground getting no information or maybe marking but the more technically advanced it comes and it's shooting up in that way the far better it is so from 20 years ago that be be the idea of standoff yeah we had standoff weapons we would use fast jet support we had laser you know designators there to mark targets and to do all that sort of stuff all that was there it's just now jumps because of the post 9/11 wars and the amount of money and effort that's been put into that we've jumped even quicker in tech military technology than we did in the Second World War it's gone off and it's fantastic I'm all for it so it yes a lot different from 20 years ago because of these these two conflicts that we've been involved with where Oh responsibility yes man and then we come back honest how much sleep did you have an average loss for the SAS how much sleep sleep sleep um well actually it's go question what happens with with with sleep is that in some cases quite you know so intermittent but there's a there's a rule in the military and there's the saying that you would learn as a as a recruit is whenever there's a lull in battle you get your head down because you don't know the next time you're going to be sleeping so what happens was was that you've this terms are always coming out okay make sure the lads are in their sleeping bags it might be two o'clock in the afternoon but the fact is if there's a if there's an hour no activity get them in their sleeping bags they might not go asleep but there's the opportunity to go asleep get them in their bags getting the bags giving them bags because you don't know when sometimes in some high-intensity operations that certainly hostage type situations that you you could be sort of going for up to 72 hours at one stage we were looking at using amphetamines to see if that would work if you can keep more concentration in fact the French done extensive training in experiments with that to see if it would help their counterterrorism troops and it's all right to a certain point but even it being on it and feta means would affect your judgment and also what happens as soon as you come off from your totally ineffective so we decided not to but yeah in some cases you know 24 hours take six hours is isn't uncommon but what you're trying to do is almost like a cow you know fifty minutes here you get to the point you have sort of you have the nods as though all people do you know you like this and then what you go you say all the guys are neck breakers because it just standing there like this and then when you're really tired like oh right the guys are on on backbreakers because you could be standing up and you sort of just fall back as if you've gone unconscious now it's you fall asleep so then you know that you've got to stop you got to stop everyone's on backbreakers they got a snob so I did probably saw about um quite a few the next stone books are kind of he's working as black ops or denial operas at operations I understand if it's one of those secret things you can't talk about but how would you research something like that since anyone who's involved in that can't really talk about it or they're not supposed to revolt reveal anything about it but that's the beauty of fiction what you can do is take real-life instances if you like and then and then put them into a fictional context so the next stone that came out last year was called dead center was based on Somali piracy in the way that the the kidnap and ransom the the K&R business works out Somalia said I was on the board of the funded private military company so that the one that recruited me initially and that in that job was based on a real job that we had for one of the for one of the insurance syndicates to get out a Canadian and Australian journalists who went in there on day two they got lifted and about trying to go in to try and find them to try and negotiate a settlement to get them out so what I used was the the the real time timeline on that and it was a ninety four day timeline to get them out but use that as the base of the reality and the way that it works and then use Nick stone the character of Nick stone and the character and history and his background to create more of the story about reality and certainly first-person narrative it's it's it's the only way to go because if you don't you can do it two ways you can go for the total fantasy you know the Expendables sort of version and that's fine it's entertainment but if you're trying to bring it down and trying to show reality you've got to base it in reality so use that I usually the stuff with the PM said it's stuff that I do for the ministry defense and what's known as a talking head for the MOT and the argument is you get a briefing every month from Emily and you try and influence the media debate doot-doot-doot which one may influence the media debate the vast retire time majority time it doesn't work sometimes it does so you know you can mix and Max reality and put it into a fictional context that way it's just great - honestly people get the lesson why everybody in centers getting picked just see how to get the mics to you do you think I'm compulsory military service could improve British society no no I think it would degrade it I'd you know that's one of the reasons why most certainly Western societies have do you keep I think Swiss have still got a military service the Israelis have him changing their military contract to one of a civil sort of service and you know a choice to work for the civil population or or to work with the military I think if you've got people that are being coerced into serving two years say in a system they don't want to be part of it not only degrades the system the military because so much time effort and expense is trying to contain and train and deal with all the problems of people who don't want to be there it actually makes the the people coming out even more disenfranchised you know certainly the French experience of people getting ready to go to university and it was cut because certainly those social mobility was really suffering because of that you've got guys who had the opportunity to get somewhere to go to university maybe come from working-class background certainly the the Algerian population in southern France near Marseilles and what happened they had to go into military service and they lost that opportunity of social mobility so it was totally counterproductive and the argument is is you know in the military sense its if you don't want to be here you can always get out you know so you don't want people who don't want to be there because it is you know getting back to your question it is a quite sort of niche business so now ship it really reminder of people happy that they're getting disciplined but they're not getting discipline order doing is getting disenfranchised right very fast sorry I didn't see everybody doing Java all right excuse me I do and then we come to you and I read recently that the German army has sort of this clause where you can question the moral judgment of your commander if you feel that it's sort of reprehensible in sort of any way so I basically two questions first of all have you ever had sort of a similar scenario where you've really questioned the morality of a particular mission and secondly do you think that that German arrangement is a good one yeah well we turn them upside down yes I think it's a good one and it happens in the British Army it's not as if you know you know we tend to think of the military based on what we've seen it you know black and white films you know Sir John Mills you know going for the desert whenever it's not like anyway it's people do question orders people do look at the look at the situation my own personal experience was a operation we conducted in the Special Air Service with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia which was a long ongoing operation quite a few guys had gone and and churned through that job and it was it was exposed by John Pilger the Australian or New Zealand report coming where it comes from so the operation was exposed you know we're working with cameras you know Pol Pot connotations and you know and you know there was those pictures of Special Forces where the Khmer Rouge you know literally by these mountains of bone some people questioned it because of the conversations with with Pol Pot the vast majority state I state I done the job there were one or two that disagreed with it and got out of the Special Air Service but it's no big sort of disgrace you know it's it's a go it's not as if you can say I don't want to do that job but I'll go and do that job you know again if you don't like it get out and what happens you say what I disagree with so it got out and you know it's not as if they're shunned it's you know it's a you know people are adults it's a moral decision in fact one became of and the other one went to work for a private military company the two guys that got out so yeah people do question it and even you know 18 year old soldiers in Afghanistan look at the situation that they are in and look at it and ask questions announce political questions and mark questions as well about what is going on there and I think it's very healthy I think it's very healthy and again you know even an 18 year old soldier he doesn't like it comes back gets out if you want one more so the pressures on the best best question it's gotta be um yes yeah yeah absolutely I think that um it doesn't matter what you're involved with you know some days you had good days bad days and different days you make great decisions really bad decisions but if you don't first of all take responsibility ability for the for the bad ones we always take responsibility for the good ones they're always our decisions but you got to take responsibility for the bad decisions as well and I hopefully learn by and if you if you can do that what happens is it all sort of evens up and certainly you know not at the time but but as a went through my army career I felt quite privileged to be there in the first place to be getting what I was getting a primary for that was something that I enjoyed but at the same time an education which was became very important to me because it's I understood you know no one should go to school until they're 19 you know it's only then you understand that you need in education you know at 14 we want one of them for you know and that was my problem so getting into the military it's fantastic so got this wonderful opportunity not only to be a soldier that I particularly liked but at the same time get an education so for me I wouldn't change anything because everything was good because without that I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing

Channel: Cambridge Union

Views: 205,617

Rating: 4.5175099 out of 5

Keywords: The, Cambridge, Union, Society, andy, mcnab, mc, nab, sas, military, author

Id: KmyMdzohaqQ

Length: 57min 32sec (3452 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 04 2012