Surviving a Firefight | No Man Left Behind

One thing you have to understand about an SCES soldier, you know, during them six months of selection, what we do is knock them soldiers down physically, mentally, everything. And they get back up and they keep moving on, and you just keep getting over each hurdle. Fear is, it’s a good emotion to feel, and it keeps you alive, but it's knowing how to control that fear and operate it under arduous conditions.

You know, certainly when you're being shot at or when you're in a contact, you have to control that fear and let that come out at another time, and you get on with the job. If you allow fear to overwhelm you, you will be taken. Being in the Special Air Service, you, with your training, know how to manage fear and where to put it.

And just to take that away, a firefight only lasts a few minutes, maybe 5, 10 minutes, and then you know you're on to something else. But it's containing that and directing the aggression in the right direction. A well-aimed shot from a stable platform will knock anybody down who's running around like a headless chicken, who basically is just squeezing off rounds and not aiming.

It takes a lot of balls for somebody to stand up and hold a position and hit, hold a shot to put one onto target. There's none of this automatic burst because, again, you'll waste a lot of rounds, and none of the rounds will actually land on target. In terms of feelings, it's training's kicked in. There's too much going on actually to worry about your feelings.

That always happens, no matter what type of conflict you're in. Once you get safely home, and then you, you know, mull over what you've done and what's happened and everything else. But during that thing, everything's happening that fast; you just react, and training takes over.