Knife Edge: Life as a Special Forces Surgeon

Knife Edge: Life as a Special Forces Surgeon Read Free Page A

Book: Knife Edge: Life as a Special Forces Surgeon Read Free
Author: Richard Villar
Tags: War, Memoir, special forces, doctor, Army, Surgery, SAS, conflict, Military biography, War surgery
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They’re all brawn, no brain and you’ll get yourself killed. Anyway, you’ve got your medical career to think of.’
    ‘It was my medical career I was thinking of. It could be ideal. Why not do both? I mean, why can’t you be a doctor and join the SAS? Someone must look after them if they get hurt. Just think of all the experience you would get.’
    I heard Jim grunt with disbelief beside me. At that point I doubted there was anything he could have said to change my mind. The moment I had seen the small group of HALO parachutists in the Hercules, I resolved that, one day, I would join them and become their doctor. Rumour had it the SAS spent much of their time on active service and real-life exercises. If so, they were bound to have broken bones, twisted knees, dislocated shoulders and all manner of orthopaedic conditions. A major part of orthopaedics was in the management of injuries and major trauma. What better training than with the SAS? Rumour also said they worked extensively overseas. Any doctor with them would be as far away from a teaching hospital as it is possible to go. I would learn how to deal with injuries, from the moment a patient was wounded, until he was evacuated to hospital and taken to the operating theatre. For a young, ambitious orthopaedic surgeon, with his eye on the Third World, I could do no better. For sure, the SAS it would be.
    The moment I returned to London, I sought advice about leaving mainstream medicine from a few, highly selected advisers, all of whom were sworn to secrecy. They, and my parents, sided with Jim. They thought the idea mad. I was, after all, already established on the first rung of a major teaching-hospital career. Was it really worth giving up all that for such a whim? I still knew very little about the SAS, but anything I heard convinced me that nowhere else in the world would I obtain such excellent training. I was also young enough to take a risk, barely twenty-one, and had time on my side.
    Jim and I parachuted together on several occasions after our basic Abingdon course, though he never fully recovered from the twisting episode at his first jump. His tale of the event, told with a charming accent in various pubs, became more unbelievable at each telling. Whenever we met he would take me to one side and ask, ‘Have you thought more about the SAS?’
    ‘Continually,’ I would reply. I barely thought of anything else and had read every book available on the subject. There were not many. I daydreamed on ward rounds, endured endless sleepless nights and talked to myself incessantly. To most who knew me, I must have gone mad. It took several months to build up courage and take the plunge. ‘I’m going to join soon,’ I told Jim on one occasion. ‘Now I’m a third-year student, I have a few skills I can offer if they want.’
    I remember Jim’s look of astonished disbelief. ‘So you’re doing it after all? I thought you were joking. But no, I can see you’re serious. You are mad, Richard. Completely scarpers.’
    It was too late by then. I was hooked.
    My trouble was that I had no idea how to go about joining. Quite rightly the SAS does not advertise, or didn’t in those days. You had to seek them rather than the other way round. There will never be a shortage of people wishing to join the Regiment. That hidden something gripping me, grips thousands of others as well. If you were to believe everyone who says they have been, or are, in the SAS you would have enough manpower for a thousand Regiments. In reality, there are only three Regiments, two Territorial and one Regular. The Territorials are part-timers who combine a civilian job with military service. The Regulars are fully committed, day in and day out, to the SAS. To some extent that still applies now, though a high-readiness Territorial reserve has been created to assist the Regulars on occasion. Selection weeds out the unworthy from both, with more than 80 per cent falling by the wayside. The odds

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