Special Forces: The Ultimate Guide to Survival

If anything is put over your mouth, it is likely to be chloroform or a similar drug to put you out. You have until you need to breathe to do something about this. Though it sounds a little sudden, we are not training your grandmother here---we expect readiness and reaction on your part. It someone grabs you from behind, slouch down, then head-butt with the back of your head and stamp on their instep. Turn and strike with your fist to the jaw, knife to the belly or draw and fire...'

If the last few minutes have been a little hairy you need to let the adrenalin subside and think clearly before you do anything else. Better to start moving in the right direction in a few minutes than have to turn around later after wasting time and energy. Try to sit down, take a smoke or brew up if you are well enough organised to have the necessary with you and not obviously pressed to keep going. Though it is pleasant and comfortable to have all the fancy gear, do remember that the most important things you need to get you home are a cool head and determination, You can steal everything else.

When you want to take shelter, get off the track and out of sight. Dog-leg back on your own track to take up an ambush position on pursuers if the ground allows. The place you should pick to take a rest needs to be a hide more than it needs to be a hotel. If it is hot, you need shelter from the sun as you will probably be lying down during the day to save water. In a cold climate it is more the wind than the cold that cools you down, so you need to think first about getting out of the wind, then the snow, rain or whatever. Very often you cannot help but remain wet but you must get out of that wind or it will kill you.

This is not a book about eating bugs and mushrooms. There are plenty of those books around if you want to become a boy scout. If you are, or want to be, a soldier---particularly a Special Forces soldier - then this is the book you need. It is about survival in rough conditions-when you have been taken hostage or prisoner of war; when you have crawled out of a downed helicopter behind enemy lines and the enemy are coming for you; or when your mates have been kilted in a fire-fight in bandit country.

This ultimate survival guide is for those who choose to go into harm's way. Soldiers, undercover operatives, security services and even those backpacking or exporting goods into some parts of the world could find themselves in serious trouble. In this book, you will learn how to: avoid being killed or captured when things go wrong; escape if you are caught; steal food; steal cars, boats and planes; find your way home and fight to kill in the dirtiest ways you can imagine.

Some of what you will read in this book will shock you---it is about how to survive in the real world where power comes from the barrel of a gun. There are no prizes for making staying alive hard work---if someone is after you, and it's you or them, let it be them.

At the age of sixteen, Robert Stirling joined the British Army as a Junior Leader Paratrooper and so spent his first year of service undergoing a strict training regime which alternated weapons, skills, drill, physical exercise and education all designed to prepare a soldier for leadership: Entering adult service and passing P Company, the Parachute Regiment selection, led to four tours in Northern Ireland and some covert experience wearing a donkey jacket and carrying a 9mm pistol. He passed selection for the SAS at just 19 years of age. Robert left the British Army and joined the Rhodesian Army towards the end of the Bush War, motivated by a distaste for communism. In Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, he led his own unit of 200 men, which included the author Yves Debay and a number of ex-French Legionnaires, against Robert Mugabe. He was in constant action and wounded twice. After the fall of Rhodesia, Robert joined the South African Special Forces-The Reconnaissance Commandos---as an instructor. As well as extensive combat experience in numerous conflicts, Robert has also been contracted to recover stolen diamonds, work undercover against mercenary operations, teach unarmed combat to riot police, provide close protection to VIPs and some other duties which it would be inappropriate to specify here. Based in Southern Spain, he travels widely and accepts some consultancy work.