UK ‘Special Forces’

DenisLawBackHeel74

Well-Known Member
Joined
20 Feb 2010
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10,711
Thought I’d post on this since their popularity has been high in recent years with that Tv show with Ant Middleton.

Anybody have any personal experience or know any serving or former members, stories ?

A close friend of mine joined the paras when a kid (In late 1970’s) and following p company he had a few choices of units including 2 para, which he joined. He also completed the commando training somewhere along the line (he told me this was quite uncommon), and had a dagger patch on his uniform to prove it (and I think he also said he could wear a green beret if he wanted!).

I recall his home leave being quite erratic, we never knew when he would get leave, he’d always kinda just turn up for a week or two then be gone again. I remember he was in Belize and Central America for long stints and his wedding had to be called off because when he came home to get married, his intended wife said he was ‘feral’....and years later elaborated a bit and told me he was like a fucking caveman, wild. If you’ve seen that game they played in James Bond with the scorpions....apparently that’s a thing, and used to be played for money in SA by British forces.

Anyway, we used to speculate whether he was in special forces due to his erratic leave, training, physical capabilities (lets just say you wouldn’t want to get into a fight with him). He never said so specifically but sometimes would tell stories about specialist roles he had training for such as within a snatch team, involved in protecting or hijacking high value or high risk people. Specialist training on communication, he said some of the things they were doing in the 1980’s were quite advanced even in comparison to very recent developments in telecommunications (WiFi, locating/triangulating phone signals etc).

I still find the covert nature of special forces very interesting and wondered if others had their own experiences. I live in leafy Cheshire but we all know the NW (and Scotland) is a big recruiting ground because we make them tough and clever up here.....

Edit: I should adjust that to say council estates of NW and Scotland
 
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Thought I’d post on this since their popularity has been high in recent years with that Tv show with Ant Middleton.

Anybody have any personal experience or know any serving or former members, stories ?

A close friend of mine joined the paras when a kid (In late 1970’s) and following p company he had a few choices of units including 2 para, which he joined. He also completed the commando training somewhere along the line (he told me this was quite uncommon), and had a dagger patch on his uniform to prove it (and I think he also said he could wear a green beret if he wanted!).

I recall his home leave being quite erratic, we never knew when he would get leave, he’d always kinda just turn up for a week or two then be gone again. I remember he was in Belize and Central America for long stints and his wedding had to be called off because when he came home to get married, his intended wife said he was ‘feral’....and years later elaborated a bit and told me he was like a fucking caveman, wild. If you’ve seen that game they played in James Bond with the scorpions....apparently that’s a thing, and used to be played for money in SA by British forces.

Anyway, we used to speculate whether he was in special forces due to his erratic leave, training, physical capabilities (lets just say you wouldn’t want to get into a fight with him). He never said so specifically but sometimes would tell stories about specialist roles he had training for such as within a snatch team, involved in protecting or hijacking high value or high risk people. Specialist training on communication, he said some of the things they were doing in the 1980’s were quite advanced even in comparison to very recent developments in telecommunications (WiFi, locating/triangulating phone signals etc).

I still find the covert nature of special forces very interesting and wondered if others had their own experiences. I live in leafy Cheshire but we all know the NW (and Scotland) is a big recruiting ground because we make them tough and clever up here.....

Whilst barracked in Germany we had a visit from a squadron of SAS, prior to them coming we were told not to talk to them and to avoid them at all times (They were only with us for 48 hours. 5 rooms were commandeered for the purpose and they had different canteen times o the rest of us, after the 48 hours were up they left, leaving only a whiff of Chinese whispers.

The only recollection of them being there were that they wore civvies and didn't look like we did, meaning army types. They left their rooms spotless and that was the last we heard of it all.
 
Thought I’d post on this since their popularity has been high in recent years with that Tv show with Ant Middleton.

Anybody have any personal experience or know any serving or former members, stories ?

A close friend of mine joined the paras when a kid (In late 1970’s) and following p company he had a few choices of units including 2 para, which he joined. He also completed the commando training somewhere along the line (he told me this was quite uncommon), and had a dagger patch on his uniform to prove it (and I think he also said he could wear a green beret if he wanted!).

I recall his home leave being quite erratic, we never knew when he would get leave, he’d always kinda just turn up for a week or two then be gone again. I remember he was in Belize and Central America for long stints and his wedding had to be called off because when he came home to get married, his intended wife said he was ‘feral’....and years later elaborated a bit and told me he was like a fucking caveman, wild. If you’ve seen that game they played in James Bond with the scorpions....apparently that’s a thing, and used to be played for money in SA by British forces.

Anyway, we used to speculate whether he was in special forces due to his erratic leave, training, physical capabilities (lets just say you wouldn’t want to get into a fight with him). He never said so specifically but sometimes would tell stories about specialist roles he had training for such as within a snatch team, involved in protecting or hijacking high value or high risk people. Specialist training on communication, he said some of the things they were doing in the 1980’s were quite advanced even in comparison to very recent developments in telecommunications (WiFi, locating/triangulating phone signals etc).

I still find the covert nature of special forces very interesting and wondered if others had their own experiences. I live in leafy Cheshire but we all know the NW (and Scotland) is a big recruiting ground because we make them tough and clever up here.....

Edit: I should adjust that to say council estates of NW and Scotland
I think you would know if he was SAS - he would have written a book by now.
 
I think you would know if he was SAS - he would have written a book by now.
Haha so true.

funnily enough he doesn’t lI’ve in UK anymore.....apparently a lot of his ‘mates’ were doing bank jobs after the army ....trying to replicate that ‘buzz’ and he wanted to get away from all that
 
I was in the Sultanate of Oman for a couple of years on loan service to his armoured regiment. We often ‘put up’ several SAS members on a regular basis. A squadron would come over and train in the jebel and train the Omani SF at the same time. They didn’t mix much and never, ever said what they were doing or where they actually went. Most you could pass in the street and never know.

I recently read American Sniper and, in my experience, our SF were never like that in Oman.
 
A lad at work claimed he was ex-SAS, turned Customer Advisor. He was definitely a Wallet Mitty character.
Yeah that’s the thing I think there’s a lot of sad individuals out there.

In my case, he’s definitely ex para with commando training....no question. It’s just speculation whether there was anything more...
 
Whilst barracked in Germany we had a visit from a squadron of SAS, prior to them coming we were told not to talk to them and to avoid them at all times (They were only with us for 48 hours. 5 rooms were commandeered for the purpose and they had different canteen times o the rest of us, after the 48 hours were up they left, leaving only a whiff of Chinese whispers.

The only recollection of them being there were that they wore civvies and didn't look like we did, meaning army types. They left their rooms spotless and that was the last we heard of it all.
Are you sure they weren’t the cleaners? :)
 

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