Secrets of the SAS: In Their Own Words (2016–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Aftershock - full transcript

NARRATOR: The SAS.

The world's most secretive
and feared military unit.

HARRY: The SAS, in reality,
is nothing like anything

I have ever seen portrayed
in a movie or TV.

It's better than that.

NARRATOR: For 70 years,

this mysterious force
has played a pivotal role

in every British military operation
you've heard of,

and plenty you haven't.

YORKY: We know we're on it,
the British Government

will deny all knowledge of us
being on it.



NARRATOR: In this series,
for the first time,

elite SAS soldiers talk
in unprecedented detail

about the gritty reality of life
inside the Special Air Service.

You have to have control,
but when it's necessary,

and only when it's necessary,

act with extreme violence...
professionally.

PHIL: Piling off of helicopters,
people swinging down ropes,

enemy running this way...
It's carnage.

ANDY: Cars and guns,
stuck everywhere.

You've got pistols
and machine guns in the car,

you've got all sorts going on.

It was great fun,
like a video game, almost.

One hung himself in the garage,
one gassed himself,

one jumped out an aeroplane
without a parachute.



COLIN: We're trained to go to war,
we're trained to fight.

But how do you train
to look at somebody

that was once your friend
and is now dead?

I basically drunk myself into
a stupor and tried to shoot myself.

NARRATOR:
This is the frank, intimate truth

of serving and surviving in the SAS.

[BREATHES HEAVILY]

NARRATOR: SAS soldiers are trained
to be capable of extreme violence...

[GUNFIRE]

...and to endure
extraordinary hardship.

But their elite training
can't protect them

from the traumatic after-effects
of their work.

There is no such thing
as an uninjured soldier.

I used to wake up
in the middle of the night,

my heart really thumping
in my chest.

Fits of temper.

Depression, dark moments.

Pushing a trolley around in Tescos...
just didn't fit in.

You're in the SAS.
You can't be seen to be failing.

They're extreme worlds.

One minute I'm killing a kid.

[GUNFIRE]

You know, very close up.

And then I'm going home

and I'm looking after
a terminally ill son.

[HEAVY BREATHING]

Take a life, look after a life.

[HEAVY BREATHING CONTINUES]

NARRATOR: The SAS units
working behind Iraqi lines

will endure
up to six weeks of intense,

exhausting, violent,
non-stop deployment.

Their missions are vital
to the success of the entire war.

There was a large
special forces group out there,

in various parts of Iraq.

There wasn't just Bravo Two Zero.

You know, I think
sometimes people forget that.

NARRATOR: The first patrol to have
lethal contact with the Iraqis

is Alpha Three Zero.

Twenty men,
driving across the Iraqi desert,

in five Land Rovers.

The lead driver is Yorky.

Our mission was really to go out
and search and destroy the enemy.

NARRATOR: To avoid detection

the patrol move
under the cover of darkness,

driving all night, every night.

One of the issues that we found
very early on in the operation

was we're driving too long.

So we'd be driving and driving

and driving ourselves
into the ground.

We'd been across the border

for the best part
of about five, six days.

Erm... And as I say,

we'd actually started to get
quite tired, you know,

people getting run down.

We'd decided this one morning
that we'd lay-up,

and we'd always start to pick
our lay-up point before first light.

Give us a chance
to identify somewhere.

So we had to pick out gullies
in the ground

that we could just get
the vehicles in

and keep them a very low profile.

Put a camouflage net over the top,

and that gave us
a lot of good cover...

from view. So from a very short
distance away you couldn't see it.

This one day,
when we'd been in the position,

the best part of the day.

Obviously, we'd got guys
in sleeping bags.

We'd got three of us sat there
having a brew,

cleaning weapons,
just, generally shooting the shit.

And then we heard
the rumbling of a vehicle.

[VEHICLE APPROACHING]

Further down, this little wadi,
this little valley, shall we say?

The nose of a vehicle part
pulled out.

And it was clearly an Iraqi vehicle.

I'd gone into a prone position,
my weapon at the ready.

One of the guys kneeled behind me,
ready to do whatever he had to do.

All under cam nets, so they couldn't
see who was under the cam nets.

We can only assume that they thought
we were friendly forces.

The driver got out.
Opened the bonnet of his vehicle

and started tinkering around
with the engine.

So we were all gobsmacked.
"What the fuck's going on here?"

And this other guy gets out,
who was clearly an officer.

Very smart. Fatigues, jumper,
padded sleeves,

insignia on his shoulder,
blue beret,

and he had his map book,
he had a pistol in his holster.

And walked over towards our--
where I was, behind the cam net.

And our troop staff sergeant
walked out.

The officer almost went to say,
"As-salamu alaykum",

you know, to basically greet him
and shake hands.

And at that point, the troop staffie
pulled up his weapon,

went to shoot him.

All of this is, to me,
was in slow motion.

The staffie went to fire his weapon,
and he had a stoppage.

Normal drill,
straight down on your knee.

- Magazine!
- Change magazine.

By then I'd already dropped the guy
and fired two rounds and hit him.

[GUNFIRE]

And he dropped the floor,
and that was that.

You think, "Whoa!
I've just actually killed somebody."

And it was my first kill.

NARRATOR:
Every member of the SAS

has to deal
with the psychological damage

their violent lives do to them.

[GUNFIRE]

Yorky, the lead driver
of Alpha Three Zero,

has just killed for the first time.

It won't be the last.

- All hell broke loose.
- [GUNFIRE]

As I ran from under the net,
training kicked in.

The officer was on the floor.

Make sure he's dead, so I put
another couple of rounds into him

and carried on.

The driver that had got out
and was working on the engine...

And the poor kid was probably
just checking the water level

or whatever, the radiator.

And he was hit with a mass volume
of high velocity rounds,

and died probably instantly.

[GUNFIRE]

[EXPLOSION]

Myself and one of the other guys
decided that we'd bury them.

But once you just started
digging into it,

you could only dig down a matter of,
you know, a few centimetres,

and just enough to lay them
and throw a bit of sand on,

and then it looked just like
some dead bodies

sticking out of a bit of sand.
And it did look like, you know,

something
out of a horror movie, really,

and, you know, and ridiculous.

I had taken somebody's life.

And... that did have an effect

that I did think about it
for quite some time afterwards.

NARRATOR: As the mission continues,
Yorky begins having strange dreams.

YORKY: It was up and down.

It was more the fact...

the dream aspect of it
was the fact that it, you know,

I've got, I had a son
that was terminally ill.

And I'd just, you know,
killed somebody.

[GUNFIRE]

NARRATOR: Yorky's far from
the only SAS soldier

to experience
the psychological effect

of their violent world.

If I go to work
and I hit my thumb with a hammer,

that's something everyone can guess.

If you see somebody
with their legs blown off,

that's not a normal--
that's not a normal thing.

If you lose three
of your closest friends, instantly,

that's not something
that's ordinary.

You can't take ordinary people
and place them in those situations,

and expect them
just to be ordinary again.

I couldn't walk into a room without
working out where the exit was

and how I was going
to disable people in the room,

and it just-- The whole thing
got quite violent in my mind.

I started drinking.

Just to, you know,
relieve the symptoms, basically.

There's nightmares, flashbacks,
the feelings of isolation,

feelings of not belonging, insomnia,
aggression,

self-medication, drugs or alcohol,

which is the whole kind of
morbidity side of things.

There's a whole load of symptoms
associated with PTSD.

COLIN: When do you start having PTSD?
Do I have it as soon as he's hit?

Got PTSD.

Does it come as soon as I start
thinking about it afterwards?

It's such a complex condition.

NARRATOR: For Alpha Three Zero
this is just the start.

They are just five days
into a six-week operation.

And the conditions
continually chip away at them,

both physically and mentally.

In Iraq, it was an environment
where you had some desert

but a large part of it was lava beds.

You know,
it was very, very arduous terrain.

You know, one night we spent,

you know, the best part of five hours
just getting up,

going over less
than a kilometre of ground.

Because it was that difficult
to get across.

When you're using
the night vision goggles to drive,

people equate to it
sometimes like skiing.

Sometimes you can be skiing
and not moving,

and you think you're moving
and it's all white around you.

Well, that's exactly what happens
in the desert.

And, on a couple of occasions,
I actually thought I was moving,

and we were actually stood
dead still.

Because I had no peripheral vision.

I had no vision around me
to say that I was actually moving.

And I only realised
that I wasn't moving

when one of the guys came up
alongside me with a bike

and just said to me,
"Are we moving yet?"

Which scared the shit out of me.

Because I thought
for the last ten minutes

we'd actually been moving.

The weather in itself was,
it was the coldest winter

in that region for decades.

We had snow at one point.

You know, guys were going down
with hypothermia

further into the operation.

NARRATOR: It's an experience shared
by all the SAS patrols in Iraq.

The first night was,
the weather was horrendous.

We was expecting European-type
temperate climate.

They tell you the temperature
is going to be this

and the night-time temperature
is going to be that.

You get there and you find out

that that's not actually
the temperature at all,

because they've done their research
on the Internet,

and they've looked
in the wrong place,

and have come up
with the wrong information.

So the kit that you've taken is
inappropriate for that environment,

they've got it completely wrong.

YORKY: So, you've got no windscreen.

You've just got the elements
just blowing in on you.

My... All my fingers
and my fingernails cracked.

I needed quite a lot
of dental surgery afterwards

to repair some of my back teeth

where I was gritting my teeth
that much,

that I was cracking my teeth.

NARRATOR: After two weeks
in the harsh conditions,

they receive new intelligence.

Saddam Hussein
is trying to escalate the war

into a full blown regional conflict.

He's indiscriminately firing
long range missiles called SCUDs

into heavily-populated areas
of Israel.

[AIR RAID SIREN WAILS]

The Israelis coming into the war
would have created

an whole world of shit,

because the Israelis being hated by,
you know,

many of the other Arab countries.

There was a lot more emphasis
put into finding SCUD.

And that changed
the mission entirely.

NARRATOR: Alpha Three Zero
are given a new mission.

Allied aircraft have spotted a huge
SCUD missile control facility

in the centre of Iraq.

Yorky's patrol are tasked
with destroying it.

The name of it
was referred to as Victor Two.

But we didn't have much intelligence
at that time,

other than that it was a big
communications centre

with a big antenna,
and well defended.

You know,
there in excess of 300...

allegedly 300 Iraqi troops on the--
in a defensive position

all around the position.

NARRATOR:
Twenty men against 300 enemy.

The SAS have always been expected
to suck up this kind of stress

no matter what the cost.

More than that, it's the kind of
dangerous mission they most admire.

The one that always springs to mind
is the Battle of Mirbat in 1972.

HARRY: The Battle of Mirbat,

eight SAS guys faced an attack
by over 300 insurgents.

The insurgents only made
one mistake:

They didn't bring enough men.

PETE: I was at the Battle of Mirbat,

where nine of us took on hundreds
of Communist Shock Troops.

It was Vietnam in the desert.

A modern day Rorke's Drift.

NARRATOR: Mirbat is in Oman.

It was a small SAS outpost,

helping the Omani Army
to suppress insurgents.

July the 18th, a kind of...
holiday atmosphere had crept in.

Because we knew,
in about a week's time,

that we would be back in Hereford.

For a bit of SAS, sports and social.

Or was it sex and suntans?
Can't remember.

The first realisation that I had
that something big was going down

was the sound of mortar bombs
impacting around the town.

[EXPLOSIONS IN DISTANCE]

We all rolled out of bed
and got kitted out.

I pulled on my shorts,
my flip flops,

no Kevlar in those days,
no body armour,

no helmets in those days,

raced up to the 5-0 Browning.

[GUNFIRE]

Towards mid-morning,
we realised that we were surrounded.

There was nowhere to go.

HQ was 40 miles away.
Nothing in-between.

[GUNFIRE]

This is gonna be
a fight to the death.

NARRATOR: For five hours,
the nine SAS soldiers

hold back 300 enemy

with a barrage
of highly accurate fire.

Two SAS are killed

and the rest face certain death
as the enemy close in.

[AEROPLANE APPROACHING]

Then, at the last moment,

Omani Air Force jets come in
over the sea.

PETE: We got lucky.
We got really lucky.

These two jets suddenly burst
through the cloud over Mirbat Bay.

Wheeling and diving.

They did a strafing,
run up the perimeter wire

using rocket and cannon.

You could hear
the volume of fire dying down.

You could hear
the cacophony of battle dying away.

I thought, "Yes. Yes. This is it.
We're going to get a result".

Real elation. Real elation.

Better than winning the World Cup.

It was only later,
when we got back to HQ...

that it started to play
a bit on the mind.

But then, in good old-fashioned
SAS tradition,

we went into a marathon
drinking session,

that lasted for quite a few days.
Viking style.

NARRATOR: But over time,
the underlying psychological effects

of years in the SAS
began to eat away at Pete.

Drinking every day.
Serious drinking problem.

And it was then that they decided
to send me down to Woolwich.

Ward 11.

The Army Psychiatric Hospital,
for treatment.

NARRATOR: Twenty years on,

Alpha Three Zero
face the same kind of odds,

one patrol must destroy a target
guarded by over 300 hundred enemy.

Yorky's unit is selected
to assess the target first-hand.

We were approximately 60 kilometres
from Victor Two,

so we put out, we went out on a recce
a couple of nights before.

NARRATOR: The constant stress
and horrendous weather

are starting to affect
the men's minds.

People, including myself,
started hallucinating

because our sleep depravation
was that bad.

So you're going
through physical hardship.

I lost all sense of time
and all that sort of stuff.

Just the sheer feeling of exhaustion.

I was seeing all sorts in my mind.
Pictures from the past,

pictures of other things
that I'd seen.

Yeah, there was a certain
amount of things

that were being made,
made up by my mind.

it was because I was very tired.

INTERVIEWER: So is there a point
where you think, "I can't go on?

- "Take the easy option?"
- No.

- Why not?
- No. It just wasn't gonna happen.

Ever.

YORKY: Why I think I'm strong

is because I was brought up
by my grandmother.

When I was born,
my mother took seriously ill

and... she eventually passed away
within three months.

My nana replaced my mother.

So for all intents and purposes
she was my mother.

And there wasn't a day goes by that,
or went by,

that she didn't tell me she loved me.

My nana brought up three families.

She brought up her sister
and brother after her mother died.

Her father died on the Somme.

She brought up that family.
She brought up her own family.

Two boys, two girls.
One of whom was my mother.

And then she brought up my family.

I got my strength through her.
Absolutely, no question.

You've just got to have the bollocks

to keep pushing yourself
to get there.

NARRATOR:
Yorky and his recce team

push on through the brutal conditions
towards their target.

But when they get there,

the situation is even more serious
than they've been told.

Their intelligence said
there were 300 men.

Their intelligence is wrong.

It was much, much bigger
than what we anticipated.

There's fucking enemy everywhere.

A lot of us thought
that it was gonna be a difficult one.

Getting out would be a problem,
to the point of massive loss.

NARRATOR: For three weeks,

trooper Yorky
and the Alpha Three Zero patrol

have endured sub-zero conditions,
sleep-deprivation

and close combat in Iraq.

The conditions were horrendous
and it was unbelievably exhausting.

NARRATOR: Their mission is to sneak
through Iraqi lines

and destroy a SCUD Missile
Control Centre with explosives.

A lot of us thought that it was
gonna be a difficult one.

Get in and do part of it.
Do most of it.

But getting out would be a problem,
you know.

Almost to the point of massive loss.

NARRATOR: But abandoning
the mission is never an option.

We just knew that we couldn't allow

for more and more of these things
to be fired into, you know,

innocent, you know, civilians.

No matter where they were.
Whether they were in Israel,

or Syria, or wherever.

It just couldn't be allowed
to happen, you know.

NARRATOR:
This capacity to keep going,

to pursue their mission,
whatever is thrown at them,

is something
the SAS specifically look for

in their selection process.

Most applicants fail
on the first stage, the hill marches.

You're going from week one,
you know, to the end of week four,

and you could be averaging
30 kilometres a day,

minimum, you know.

And you're carrying a minimum of
35 pound on your back,

with a rifle, with a belt
and a water bottle on your side.

You have what's known
as the point to point...

which is twice
over the Pen y Fan mountain.

It's a timed march
and it's a cut off time.

I think, if I remember correctly,
it's five hours.

Anybody who doesn't make that time
is cut from the course.

Even by the end of week one,
people were dropping out like flies.

We lost a chap on the selection,
on the first week of selection,

the guy actually died on selection.

We started with 130 odd people
and we finished with 16.

And even that was the highest
selection pass rate in, you know,

nigh on 20 years
from what we were told.

I found selection particularly hard,

because you never know
how good or bad you're doing

because none of the instructors
will tell you.

HARRY: For me, personally,
the low point for me

was, I think, the endurance march,

the final stage
of the endurance march.

And it was so cold,
I knew I had to get some food in me

and the only food I had
was a Mars bar.

And my hands were so cold,

and I was-- I couldn't get
the paper off the Mars bar.

So I ate the Mars Bar and the paper.

And I kept thinking,
"I'm never going to make it."

And I remember everything
in my past welled up inside me.

All the times I had been bullied
as a kid.

And I remember screaming out,
screaming into the wind,

I'm not going to let this beat me!

I think everybody who does selection

comes to a point
where they think they can't go on

but, in fact, you can.

What eventually gets you through it,

and what separates the chaps
who pass SAS selection,

is the fact that you will not
let something beat you.

NARRATOR:
In Iraq, despite discovering

that they face vastly more enemy
than planned,

the patrol intend to proceed
with their mission.

YORKY: After the recce,
you get back to your location

and then spend a great deal of time

preparing for the mission
that's gonna take place.

You build a picture for it.

You make a model of the ground.

The fact that then you go on
to the target,

you are, hopefully,
going into an area

where you've really already seen
in your mind's eye what it's like.

That that building's gonna be there.

That mound is gonna be there,
et cetera, et cetera.

We set off at sun down
and drove towards the target.

Stopped a couple of kilometres
short of the target.

I guess I've been scared
before most battles I've been in.

I mean, even the bravest guy
feels anxiety before battle.

Fear is good.
Fear makes you cautious.

It's what you do next that counts.

The secret is,
you've got to act completely normal,

calm, totally in control,

as if you're a man
who knows no fear.

Going into a hostile environment
knowing that there's a potential

that it's gonna be a bit
of lead flying in your direction

is-- or potentially killed,

is interesting,
it's extremely exhilarating.

It's the fact of like,
first of all, accepting,

this is what you do for a living.

And it's professionalism.
Doing your job right.

Putting all your training
into practice

and making sure that you do it
quickly and effectively.

If you're scared...
If you're feeling scared,

you'd better get cracking
and do something about it.

If you convert fear correctly

then you become more aware
of your surroundings,

your much more--
your peripheral vision

is opened up much more,

and you're taking in
more information

about movement around you.
So conquering the fear very quickly

allows you to become more focused
on the task in hand.

And you may die doing it.
But you're not going to,

because what you're going to do
is fight until the very last minute.

NARRATOR: But as Alpha Three Zero
approach the target,

all their careful planning
goes out the window.

YORKY: The whole scenario
of the building,

the communication centre
was different.

And in fact, what had happened is
it had been blown up already.

The coalition aircraft had gone in

and apparently stealth had been in
and floored it.

NARRATOR: But the bombers have missed
one vital piece of equipment.

The massive radio antenna
at the heart of the installation

is still standing.

And rightly so, the decision was made
to drop the antenna.

Then we completely
rebriefed the team.

So everybody
was on a different mission now.

NARRATOR: One team go in
to lay explosive charges,

the rest take up covering positions.

A team went in to drop the antenna.

I mean, I'm talking about
an antenna that was 200-feet high.

Myself and one of the other guys
went to cover a vehicle

that was sat close by.

All of a sudden, as we approached
the vehicle that I was covering,

there was a noise in the vehicle.

Now by this time, let's call it,
the assault team,

that was going to drop the antenna,
had already gone into the position.

I rushed forward,
opened the vehicle,

and there was a young lad
sat in the cab,

with somebody on the other side.

But I could see
the silhouette of the face,

and this very, very eerie,
shadowy face of a young kid.

In uniform. Iraqi.
AK-47 sat next to him.

He tried to pull it out.

And at that moment, I shot him.

[GUNFIRE]

I'm under no illusion, that young kid
would have dropped me...

if he'd had the chance
but I couldn't allow that.

What actually happened is,
as I fired, I fired two shots...

[GUNFIRE]

...and my partner in crime
at the time

thought that we were being shot at
by this person in the vehicle.

He hadn't realised it was me
that was opening fire.

And he fired
right over the top of my shoulder.

[GUNFIRE]

So I had to peel away, and he fired
a load of rounds into the cab

and, obviously, killed whoever it was
at the other side.

Everything set off then.

[GUNFIRE]

There was hundreds of them
just coming out

and as we started
to get back to the RV,

where the vehicles were,

well, then it got
a little bit messy then.

We started taking real severe
heavy fire from a big sandbank.

And there was lots of enemy.

You could see the silhouettes
of them on the top of it.

As they were withdrawing
from the antenna, the position,

the explosives charges went off.

It just literally fell over.

I remember, literally, running back,
tracer rounds are between our legs.

[GUNFIRE]

By the time
I got back to the RV vehicle,

that was sat there
waiting for everybody to come into,

the guy that was on board.
who I've always said ever since...

had massive bollocks
because he just sat there

and there was red and green hornets
firing all over the place.

you know, tracer rounds. And,
I mean, going all over the place.

Hitting the back of his Land Rover.

And I jumped on the back of
the RV vehicle. The vehicle started.

[ENGINE STARTS]

And I fell off the vehicle.

[YELLS]

In a fucking big heap on the floor.

And I remember screaming out.

And I thought, "You fucking wimp!"
[LAUGHS]

Because I'd fallen
onto the fucking floor.

And I thought
they were going to fucking leave me.

But the vehicle stopped
and I jumped back on.

And they all started
fucking saying stuff, you know,

trying to whisper it, "Wanker,"
and... But, yeah.

One of the lads
who was scanning the area,

you could hear him saying,
"There's fucking thousands of them."

Okay. Maybe it was an exaggeration
but he could see hundreds of heads

and people running around
all over the place

and we just literally drove
out of the centre of them,

into the distance.

We didn't take any casualties.

We didn't-- You know, literally,
nobody got hit.

You know, there was a couple of...
One of the lads, in particular,

one of my old mates from the troop

had rounds go
through his trouser leg.

Never touched him.
He actually thought he'd been hit.

And we give him shit for years
and years afterwards.

"Oh, I've been fucking hit!
I've been hit!"

And it was just, literally, the round
going through his trouser leg,

but he has to live with that.

NARRATOR:
After six weeks of hypothermia,

exhaustion and close up killing,

Yorky's patrol finally return home...

and they're plunged
straight back into normal life.

ANDY: When you come home, you know,

you've still got to take the kids
to school,

still got to cut the grass,
find the cat, you know.

All that sort of normal stuff.

And there's no guarantee
that everyone can deal with that.

Pushing a trolley around in Tescos...

just didn't fit in.

Just looking at people and going,
you know, "What's going on?"

You know,
you're not part of the real world.

Because the real world is,
yeah, high octane,

you know, proper doing stuff.

You can't put someone in Afghanistan
for six months,

take them out and expect them
just to go around Asda

and do the shopping
with their mind on nothing else.

They're... extreme worlds.

I did start to think that, you know,

I've done something wrong
with my life, you know.

It is payback time, maybe.

[GUNFIRE]

I could see
this very, very eerie, shadowy face

of a young, young kid.

Started hallucinating.

Getting out would be a problem.

One minute, I'm killing a kid...

and then I'm going home

and I'm looking after
a terminally ill son.

Take a life, look after a life.

NARRATOR: In the early '90s,

the psychological issues
soldiers faced

were not as well understood
by the military as they are today.

YORKY: When we got back,

everybody had an interview
with the doctor, the MO,

and... [CHUCKLES]
...he asked how you was.

"Any problems?" And give you
a bag of... [CHUCKLES]...vitamins.

[LAUGHS]

Fuck! A bag of vitamins. Yeah.

Anyway...
Yeah, it was weird, you know.

These little tablets.
That'd sort you out. [CHUCKLES]

Yeah. Bah!

My... let's call it, mental attitude,
mental illness...

came about because I had a son
that was terminally ill

and I became a single parent
looking after him and his brother.

Two or three other guys
in the regiment

that had problems with-- you know,
or issues with family.

Children that were
very, very seriously ill.

The SAS were never geared up
for that.

And whether they are now,
I don't know.

We're trained to go to war,
we're trained to fight,

we're trained if we, you know,
if we can't go left then we go right.

But how do you train for those
last few minutes with somebody?

Or to look at somebody
that was once your friend

and is now dead?

I've seen a few friends die,
probably, more than I would want to.

Couple of others,
the padre and the...

I can't remember
the other boy's name,

within a year of me getting out
they'd killed themselves.

And one of them, you know,

one hung himself in the garage,
one gassed himself,

one jumped out of an aeroplane
without a parachute.

You know, the psychological effect
over the years of... Fucking bizarre.

ROB: My dreams would creep
into my daytime

and kind of take over a little bit.

So I'd get quite paranoid
about things

and I thought
it was just totally normal

for me to be...

Violent thought patterns
and intrusive thoughts.

I thought all of that was normal.

I was prone to...

fits of temper.

Which I hadn't been, for no reason.

And, although, I didn't realise it
at the time, I probably,

because I'd been in almost constant
operations for nearly two years,

I probably was suffering from some
low level post-traumatic stress.

And it took me quite a long time
to come out of that.

My worst point was when I was alone
in South Africa, in my house...

and I'd been working up in Africa,
doing various things up country,

and I basically drunk myself
into a stupor

and tried to shoot myself,

which wasn't particularly
a wise idea.

I failed miserably.

Came back to UK

and then decided that I ought to go
and find some help.

Almost exactly two years to the day,
after I'd left the army...

my son passed away in my arms.

When Matthew started to go, he...

I got Damien alongside the bed,

and when Matthew
was just slipping away,

and we both hugged him.

And he passed away then.

It was 25 past four.

[GUNFIRE]

The young lad that I killed
on the attack of Victor Two...

did bother me.
It bothered me to the extent

that I could equate to the fact that,
at one point, I've killed a young lad

and then went home to look after
my son who was terminally ill.

Every soldier has been away
and experienced things

that they...
that their civilian counter parts

would not have experienced,

and some of those things
are traumatic.

So there is no such thing
as an uninjured soldier.

Everybody is...

Everybody is affected
to a lesser or greater degree.

YORKY: I've spent a lot of time
looking deep into myself,

as to how I can control depression,
dark moments.

And I've worked out my own
little ways of dealing with that.

My big thing is just to get out
and go and do some training.

Go to the gym,
go to the swimming pool,

go walking on the hills.

That's how I deal with it
and it's a great leveller then.

If I go swimming, all I have
to worry about is breathing.

NARRATOR: Next time.

- Hunted, captured...
- [INDISTINCT SHOUTING]

...tortured
in the ultimate SAS survival story.

When you're going up
against ten to one,

there's a certain mentality,
you're indestructible.

You've got to think fast.

Speed, aggression and surprise.

COLIN: If you make
the wrong decision, you're dead.

[GROANING]

If you're still breathing,
you're still winning.

- [INDISTINCT SHOUTING]
- [GUNFIRE]

All they could do
was get the fuck out of there.

- Contact! Get down!
- Get down! Get down!