Why as an SAS soldier it goes against decades of training to speak out

Those are the Big 4; the only items of information that a prisoner of war should divulge.

Resistance to Interrogation (R to I) teaches those “prone to capture” to restrict the information that they might otherwise give away.

When I did the training it was a curious blend of dogma and logic. Towards the end of my SAS selection, we were lectured by two unimpressive RAF officers.

Their theme was the sacred importance of the Big 4. “Stick to the Big 4,” they instructed. “Say nothing more.”

“But surely,” I asked with barely concealed sarcasm, “that’s just nonsense. I mean, if I attach a car battery to your balls you’re going to say something. Even if it’s just Ow!”

There was a titter around the room amongst the dozen or so aspiring SAS soldiers.

Around 180 of us had started selection some three months previously. By that afternoon there were just a few of us approaching the end. It was so close.

That point was made by one of the SAS instructors who pulled me aside. “Screw the nut, boss,” he advised softly - be careful. “You’re nearly there. Don’t rock the boat, mate.” I shut up.

There was logic to the dogma, however impractical.

The evidence is that vastly more information is divulged by prisoners of war in response to their captors’ acts of kindness than is ever forced by coercion.

A solicitous word is more likely to loosen the tongue than a rubber truncheon. And that is partly because there is a powerful process at work, known by psychologists as “the shock of capture”.

The term refers to the disorientating and sudden transition from one state to another within which the captive’s carefully prepared defences are brought to naught.

And once the talking starts, it’s difficult to stop it. So there is something to be said for teaching the Big 4, even if it’s quite unrealistic to expect anyone to stick to it.

But the culture of secrecy runs deeper than that within the SAS, driven by many things. Tactics, technology and techniques are obviously useful only so long as they are secret.

The sort of work that the SAS does and the sort of people it does it with are often, in and of themselves, highly secret.

There is (or there certainly was when I was there) a deep-set inhibition about discussing operational matters with anyone who didn’t “need to know”; even within the regiment.

I committed a faux pas in this regard just as soon as I’d passed selection; perhaps it was the shock of getting in, who knows.

I met a troop commander from a different squadron, some of whom I knew had been involved in a recent operation. “Were you on [x]?” I asked him innocently. His expression froze and his reply was as icy. “You’ll find we don’t ask that sort of question here,” he said quietly. And that was that.

Opsec (operational security) was a tangible force within the regiment. A way of life. Almost a religion. It goes further.

For much of my time in the regiment I shared with a fellow troop commander a small cottage at the foot of the Black Mountains.

Henry and I had been on selection together; we were friends; we’d been through a lot. But we were in different squadrons and so we did different things.

And neither of us needed to know what the other one did. In the two or three years that he and I shared that cottage, there were many occasions when one of us would arrive back home after a month or two away; tired, thinner and browner.

And the other would never ask where he’d been, what he’d done or how it had gone. It just wasn’t done. It’s difficult conveying that level of Opsec to a more modern generation.

Towards the end of my tour I was selected to go and run the SAS Troop in Northern Ireland. A last-minute change of plan saw me diverted off to war in the Gulf.

When that was over, I rejoined my men in Northern Ireland; tired, thinner and browner. Not a single soldier there asked me where I’d been, what I’d done and how it had gone. They all knew, of course. But no-one asked.

The culture of Opsec, even among ourselves, ran very, very deep. Which is why SAS: The Shadow War series is so remarkable.

In it nearly a score of former SAS and 14 Company soldiers speak candidly about their work in Northern Ireland.

Given the in-built antipathy to such exposure, borne of decades of immersion in Opsec, it begs the question: why are they speaking out so unusually? The answer is simple.

There is (or there was) a simple contract at the heart of the relationship between the SAS and our government. Actually the same contract extends to all the state’s secret servants.

In essence it was this: we risk our lives to do the secret things you need us to do, no matter how dangerous or difficult they are. When we’re finished, we guard your secrets with our silence. In return, we rely upon you to own what we did and to have our backs in perpetuity.

That was the contract we lived by. But now it is broken.

The evidence of that is in the queues of saddened, angry, former SAS soldiers trudging a path towards the courts in Northern Ireland, dragged there by gleeful Republican activists who have no love for our country, scarcely conceal their admiration for the IRA, and who have become skilled at using the law and the naive indifference of our government as their weapons of choice against it, and against us.

Once in court, the cases are heard by judges who have no understanding of security, have never heard a shot fired in anger, and who, in some cases, view the world through the narrow prism of commercial law.

All paid for by the taxpayer and watched with shameful indifference by ministers. That is why former SAS soldiers are now speaking out. They feel that they have no alternative.

The government may not like them breaking their silence. But if ministers will not take ownership of what was done in the government’s name then they will simply have to accept that they cannot expect former SAS men to honour a contract that the government has breached.

Once the floodgates open, there are many, many secrets that may emerge which ministers may come to wish had remained secret.

That is the problem with departing from the Big 4. Once the genie is out of the bottle it is difficult to coax back in.

Listen to the first three instalments of SAS: The Shadow War now, or become an Independent Member for exclusive access to all eight episodes. Available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify