h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Passing the SAS Selection Course - Myth and Reality - A12936765
Author: SAS-MULE - U4646541

This is an attempt to explain to potential candidates for SAS selection what is actually required.

Of necessity, I have had to draw heavily on my own personal experience, and it is therefore written in the first person.

I could think of no other way of writing it that would be convincing or that would allow me to illustrate properly the points I am trying to make.

Wow. It's excellent. The first person could be a problem, but I expect if we can't persuade the eds, then it'd go through AWW in days.

Many thanks for that! When I saw someone had already commented, I was as nervous as a cat. I agree about the first person - sort of goes against the grain - but I truly can't think of any other way of doing it.

And what does AWW mean? I'm rather decrepit and not very with-it!

The alternative writing workshop, which sends things to the underguide

Writing-Alternative

I think we can get this into the guide, if you're willing to trim and edit actually, trim and edit quite a lot. But we have a home for it, either here or in the UG

I love to read anything which has personality stamped right through it. Many thanks for sharing this with us. I've always had some sort of superficial admiration for the guys that do this, but this has made me think a lot deeper.

Good luck with your expedition!

A thoroughly enjoyable and compelling read - thank you.

I feel that removing the first person references will, at the worst, destroy the Entry. At best it will lose it's credibility.

Very few Entries are accepted for the Edited Guide that are written in the first person. Some are though - I hope that this may be one of them.

oh my, this is great.
Not sure if TPTB will think it's EG material though - maybe more Underguide material?

But I love it. And it's made me nostalgic for the Army.

Thank you all for your comments. Very good of you to wade through it all.

I have a question, and would like some opinions on it if possible.

The paragraph about the fighting on the mountain top sort of bothers me. It was far and away the hardest bit to write - I rewrote it about 20 times - and it was put in there a) to establish my front line credentials (there's snobbery among soldiers as there is everywhere else) and b) because the rest is all about training. I wanted to inject a note of stark reality - to remind readers that actually it's all very far from being a game in the end.

Also, I tried to keep that para as tight as possible, with the result that I feel it didn't convey the horror or the fear of those ten days at all well. On the other hand, to have done that would have required even more verbiage.

My problem is this: does it jump out at the reader and seem somehow out of place in any way? Should it be cut out entirely, expanded slightly, left as it is, or what? All suggestions gratefully accepted.

That paragraph is great. It's really simply written, but packs a huge punch. It performs your a) and b) perfectly.

I've been thinking why this article is so good to read, and I think the answer is that it works on different levels. There's the changing perception of the SAS both within the army and externally; there's the physical and mental journeys you have to go through in training; and there's the question about what is the right stuff to make an SAS soldier. You revisit these throughout the article.

As others have said, it's not the standard fare for this guide, and I would like to see an early assessment by one of the in-house editors before we go too far down the road to polish it. I would really like to see it included, though.

Hi, great entry - I've no idea whether or not the powers that be are going to like its style in the edited guide or not, but I thought it was an excellent read.

Re your 'questionable' paragraph...

I must admit that paragraph did stand out a little... it's the only one that could be taken to be 'bragging'.

Personally, I don't need that paragraph to tell me your average SAS trooper hasn't spent his entire career sat on his backside in Hereford.

I think this could expand into several entries and a series in the post, actually. If you made essentially an autobiography series telling of the places you've been to in the course of your work, possibly leading up to details of your expedition, you could make factual entries as well, covering the subject very thoroughly and, with this standard of writing, very enjoyably. It's worth thinking about, I'm sure.

Your comments are extremely valuable, and I'm most grateful.

I was interested by the remark about the 'bragging' paragraph. That's exactly what I was worried about. My problem, in this article and in life too, is that I did what I did, but unless one is very careful, talking and writing about it can so easily seem like showing off, even when that is far from the intention.

I'm battling with something else too, which is: who did I write this thing for? Although it would be nice to get the 'Edited Guide' seal of approval, at the end of the day I'm not too bothered. Like all writers, one wants one's scribbles to reach the widest audience possible, but the people this is really aimed at are those who are contemplating trying for the SAS. If they can find it by doing a 'search' then I'm happy.

I wrote it because the 'advice' I quoted at the beginning of the article really irritated me. I feel sorry for today's young men. They are bombarded with Rambo-esque images and similar drivel, and so much nonsense has been written about the SAS. All I had was a book about the WW2 SAS, and one magazine article which a flatmate chucked into my lap one evening with the words, 'I think this is for you.' I read it and signed on the very next day for the territorial selection course. In short, my mind wasn't full of gaudy images and overblown garbage. I'm trying, in a very small way, to redress the balance.

There's something else. The comment, 'We don't try to fail you, we try to kill you' really got up my nose. It is the opposite of the truth and I think it needs to be addressed. So, I'm going to add a bit - it'll make the piece longer but can't be helped - that will deal with that. Also, I'm not going to cut the battle paragraph, but I will add something which I hope will put it in context and clarify it's purpose.

Finally, I can't spend too much time on this. At the moment I'm twiddling my thumbs, waiting for my pension to be sorted out, but any day now I have to swing into action and get going on my 10,000-mile ride. It will be a tough trip - in fact, it'll make everything else I've ever done look like a walk in the park - and at the moment I'm worried about being caught in the Turkish mountains by the first winter snows, so every day's delay now could have bad consequences. Also, I'm writing this on a Psion netBook, in a village deep in the Caucasus, transmitting through a mobile phone, and it's a real pain technically.

So, I'll do the rewrite, and then perhaps we could all decide whether to leave it in 'Peer review' or submit it to the AWW. I will take your collective advice on that.

Meanwhile, many thanks.

Hi SAS-Mule,

I think I need to read the entry again, fully, but we do have a precedent for first-person entries so long as they present a unique experience where the first-person approach is essential. What it really means is that we discourage first-person approaches where they're not needed - an entry on a film or a book, say, that others could easily have experienced in the same way. Take a look at this entry:

A401905 'Training for the Antarctic - a Personal Perspective'

Perhaps Passing the SAS Selection Course - a Personal Perspective' might be an appropriate title?

It's right that the "Personal Perspective" entries are limited, it makes them special. I am thinking of the Cancer one, and the Diabetes one.

This works for methanks for writing it SAS-MULE

Galaxy Babe
Scout

Right, the rewrite is done. That was the enjoyable bit. Posting it with my Heath Robinson system was quite another, but it seems to have made it in one piece.

For those who've already waded through it, the battle scene has been expanded and incorporated under a new heading, 'The Fascination of War'. It's long, but it has a purpose, and I hope the 'bragging' element has been well and truly excised.

I've also added a section entitled 'The Instructors' near the end. And finally there is a one-para addition at the end of the interrogation section. This is because the previous ultimate para left a thought hanging in the air and I felt it needed explaining. Apart from these changes, everything else is exactly as was.

Anyway, I trust the new version meets with your guarded approval.

As to titles, I'm not good at them, but I'm not wild about ' - a Personal Perspective.' I think it suggests 'The Nasty Time I once had on the Brecon Beacons.' It may be hubris, but I hope I've managed a bit more than that, because although in many ways it's a very personal account (of necessity) I've tried to reach beyond that towards more general observations about what it is to be SAS, and also perhaps what it is to be a fighting soldier in general. They're a much misunderstood and maligned group, portrayed as idiots like S. Stalone or as spaced-out psychopaths in overblown rubbish like 'Apocalypse Now'.

That said, I don't think ' - Myth and Reality' has a lot going for it either. There's only a few lines of myth, but page after page of reality.

So, how about ' - from the Inside'. To me it suggests an insider's view, which might therefore be expected to be personal in some degree, but it can also mean from 'inside the man', which is really what the whole piece is about.

Anyway, I'm open to suggestion. And, as ever, many thanks for all your help and interest.

Particularly loved this phrase...

"Those volunteers that show promise even get encouragement. It's very low-key: a quiet smile here, a wink there, but your spirits soar when it happens."

It really rang a bell...

Whilst it was nowhere near as intense as your experience - I remember the exact moment (during RN basic training) I realised that the guys training me were human beings, with a sense of humour, and were just doing their job to make sure you were capable of doing yours... It really is a defining moment, and once you do accept that, in 99% of cases, you've got it made.

Oh, and "otherwise they leave people alone unless they are designated enemies of the Queen." is not _totally_ true... Certainly not if you wander into the Senior Rates/Sergeants Mess Bar on a particular RAF base wearing Naval uniform and shout "Oi! Will the raving poofters with the pink landrover outside move the ruddy thing - you're blocking us in!". The growls that came from the corner of the bar were pretty scary!

That's because we were very sensitive about it! Can you imagine the acute embarrassment of driving around in a pink monstrosity. Pink is for baby girls. I could never understand it. The only pink desert, as far as I know, is in Libya, which is where the idea came from - in WW2! Everywhere else, the vehicles stood out like dog's sphericals.

In many ways we were very retarded. The radios in 1968 were old WW2 spy, suitcase things. They had valves, and plug-in crystals which you kept in your top pocket! Absolute junk. Just before I left we got radios that contained transistors - and you could talk into them as well. Magic. We also used Bren guns. And once we were sent into battle with US M16s, but Belgian ammo. It didn't fit and kept jamming, so we all had to carry a brass rod to shove down the barrel to eject the cases. Under fire.

You see what I mean about being trash

Hi all,

I'm sorry to bother you, but I'd rather like some opinions on the rewrite. It's the section entitled 'The Fascination of War' (which I've twiddled a bit since I first posted it).

It incorporates parts of the old 'Introduction', but has added an expanded battle description. However, I'm not sure if it's length - basically six extra paragraphs - has unbalanced the whole in some way. I'm happy with the rest of the piece at this stage. I just want to sort out this one thing, and then I'll let it sit and see what happens.

Many thanks.

Its one thing to have an opinion but another to write your opinion in the first person here in Peer Review. Maybe the alternate Guide accepts the first person but Peer Review here doesn't. Please remove this and put it in the right place.

Opti, it's already been established that this is progressing in a fit manner. There's no need for the author to remove it from PR.