This is a series. Read part one and two here.

 

Camp Two was a different pudding.

Not to say that the physical or mental pressure eased.  But now it was selection by training as opposed to Camp One’s selection by torture.

Nestled in rural Wales, Camp Two resembled an operational Detachment base.  There was a bar, a TV room, lecture rooms, ranges, etc.

Women and men lived together.   This, of course, was calculated—the DS wished to know how candidates interacted with each other when under pressure.  They monitored, for example, how much candidates drank at the end of a stressful day or how they interacted with the opposite sex. (Steamy affairs did happen.  And the only SBS operator to ever fail selection did so because he was caught ‘fraternizing’ with a female candidate.)

The six-month program had seven phases: the driving phase, the photography phase, the surveillance phase, the unarmed combat and weapons phase, and the fieldcraft and reconnaissance phase.

At the end of each segment, candidates had to complete an exercise testing the phase’s skill to advance to the next.