The Parachute Regiment was born on 22 June 1940, but the British Army was late to the party in terms of military parachutists. As early as 1927 the Italians were developing a military parachuting unit; in 1936 the Soviet Army countered an Afghan invasion of Tajikistan using airborne soldiers; and, in the early stages of the Second World War, Germany had launched devastatingly successful assaults on the Netherlands and Belgium using glider and parachute troops. Hitler’s airborne units were also crucial to the Blitzkrieg that led to the fall of France in 1940 and it was this that persuaded our Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, that Britain needed its own airborne division. In a memorandum to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he called for a ‘corps of at least five thousand parachute troops, suitably organised and equipped’ as part of his plan for ‘a vigorous, enterprising and ceaseless offensive against the whole German occupied coastline’.
Not everybody thought Churchill was right. As a report by the Air Staff put it:
We are beginning to incline to the view that dropping troops from the air by parachute is a clumsy and obsolescent method and that there are far more important possibilities in gliders. The Germans made excellent use of their parachute troops in the Low Countries by exploiting surprise, and by virtue of the fact that they had practically no opposition. But it seems to us at least possible that this may be the last time that parachute troops are used on a serious scale in major operations.
They were overruled. A Parachute Training School was set up at Ringway airfield, near Manchester, and the men of No. 2 Commando—one of fifteen Commando units that Churchill had tasked to ‘develop a reign of terror down the enemy coast’—were selected to train with parachutes.No. 2 Commando became the 11th Special Air Battalion, before mutating into the Parachute Regiment in 1942.
The Paras’ first operation took place in February 1941, when they were dropped into Italy and destroyed the Tragino Aqueduct in Apulia. Nearer home, in early 1942 they pulled off a daring raid during which they removed vital components from a German radar installation on the Normandy coast. They were also deployed in North Africa, where the Germans dubbed them ‘Die Roten Teufeln’—the ‘Red Devils’—on account of their maroon berets. Churchill’s conviction that the British Army needed a parachute regiment was more than justified, and after the Second World War the Paras would go on to see active service in, among other places, the Far East, Aden, Cyprus, and, when I was still a teenager, Northern Ireland. They had a reputation for being some of the toughest, most fearless, most respected soldiers in the British Army.
I was about 14 when the Parachute Regiment came to Nottingham, and I knew none of this. I only knew I loved soldiers and soldiering, which was why I went to a big Army show in the Old Market Square, a large, old-fashioned space in the centre of the city. It was here that the Parachute Regiment Display Team had set up shop. Of course, I was interested in all aspects of the Army, but it was these soldiers who immediately caught my eye. There was something about them, something that set them apart from all the others. Perhaps it was their air of confidence, or perhaps it was just the way they dressed. They wore parachute smocks, for a start, and had a different sort of camouflage uniform. And, of course, they wore the famous red beret.
The Paras had erected a tower in the middle of the square. It must have been about fifty feet high—although to me at that age it no doubt looked twice that—and we were allowed to perform simulated parachute jumps from the top of it. It was by far the most exciting thing I’d ever done. The tower, I now know, was a fan descender. Kitted out in a parachute harness, you attached yourself to a cable. Down below, at the other end of this cable, was a fan that slowed your descent to a speed similar to that of a real parachute jump—about twenty feet per second. I was awed by the experience.
Long before that day I knew that I wanted to join the Army, and I knew that I wanted to be a soldier—the best solder I could possibly be—rather than a military mechanic or an engineer. And when I saw the Red Berets in the Old Market Square that day, I realized that I wanted to be in the Parachute Regiment. Whenever I mentioned it to anyone, they would suck their teeth and warn me how hard it was to get in, and how gruelling the training would be if I was accepted. The Parachute Regiment was only for the best of the best. That only made me want to join it all the more.
Still, it seemed a big step from being a teenage Army cadet to signing up with my revered Paras. But when I started what was to be my last year at school, an Army recruiting officer came to talk to us. His job was to try to persuade classrooms full of teenage kids that joining up was a great way to see the world and get a bit of excitement. I don’t know what effect his words had on my peers, but as far as I was concerned, he was preaching to the converted. I couldn’t quite believe it could all be that easy—I didn’t even have to go and ask anyone about joining the Army. They had come to me! I told the officer that I wanted to join the Parachute Regiment. No teeth-sucking from him. No words of discouragement. He just gave me a big smile and a piece of paper to sign.
Soon afterwards the Army invited me to go on an assessment course. This lasted about a week and was a bit like The Krypton Factor—a series of mental, aptitude and physical tests—but I passed easily enough and was given the green light to join the Army as a junior soldier when I left school. I was over the moon. I’d always wanted to be a soldier, and now I didn’t have to worry about what I was going to do when my schooling was over. I certainly had no worries that I was embarking upon a dangerous career. Why would I? I was only 16, and quite unaware of the realities of those conflicts that had filled the public consciousness as I was growing up, like the Vietnam War or the Troubles in Northern Ireland. I was embarking upon an adventure, and looking forward to it.
And so I joined up, along with a friend from the Army Cadet Force called Ralph—a big guy with a black belt in judo. Filled with excitement, we travelled down to Aldershot to begin our training with 30 Platoon, Junior Parachute Company, at Browning Barracks. It felt like a big step, flying the nest and joining the college-like atmosphere at Aldershot. We still had the benefit of school holidays, but now we actually earned a wage. It was a pittance really—enough to buy boot polish and toothpaste, just about—but all the same it felt good to have money in your pocket.
The emphasis at Aldershot was on sport and fitness with lots of outside activities, including trips to go canoeing, climbing and potholing all round the country. I remember camping out in the Devil’s Punch Bowl in Surrey in a foot of snow, which was just the sort of thing I loved. It wasn’t for everyone, though. Ralph dropped out after about six weeks, having decided that the disciplined environment wasn’t for him. He wasn’t the only one. A lot of people left, for a variety of reasons, but I stuck it out.
Whenever I went back home to Nottingham, I felt that my eyes had been opened to a whole new way of life. A lot of the guys I had grown up with had simply moved from school into a dead-end job in the local pit or in some dreary factory. The biggest thing they had to talk about was that they were going out with a new girl, or had started drinking in a different pub. When they asked me what I’d been doing, I was able to say that I’d been potholing, or shooting, or climbing. I felt my life was fuller as a result of being a junior soldier, and it spurred me on. I may have been young, but I knew how I wanted things to pan out.
I wanted to progress to the full-blown Parachute Regiment. To don the red beret.
Chapter Two The Maroon Machine
At the age of 17 I moved on from the junior Paras and into 448 Platoon, Recruit Company, part of the training and assessment wing of the Parachute Regiment.
My time in Recruit Company would last six months, and right from day one I knew that I was embarking upon just about the most difficult training and selection regime that the regular British