Warrior Training (13 page)

After that glimpse, I decided to zone out again, staring at the top of the interrogator's head with lifeless, unfocused eyes. This seemed to annoy him, as he eventually left the safe confines of his desk and stood right in front of me, staring directly into my face. I could only presume that he was staring into my eyes but I kept my vision blurred so that his face resembled a grey hairy ball.

The interrogator asked the same questions over and over again. Occasionally I returned to the present and thought
about how much I would like to knee him in the groin, but as his rants intensified and his spit splattered my face, I returned to the surreal comfort of emptiness.

‘What's your rank?' said the angry grey hairy ball.

‘Private,' I replied.

‘What's your rank?'

‘Pr –'

‘Liar,' he interjected. ‘What's your rank?'

‘Private.'

‘Liar. Your rank is trooper. What's your fucking rank?'

‘Private.'

‘Take this idiot away and let him have a think about it,' said the grey hairy ball.

My vision and hearing were once again stolen from me as the guards refitted my goggles and muffs. I was led out of the room, across a gravelled surface that pained my soft feet and into another building. The night air of the Northam winter chilled my skin, and over the next few hours this cold would seep into my core.

The guards pushed me onto the floor, crossed my legs and placed my hands on my knees. I would spend the best part of 48 hours in this position, the only respite coming in the form of punishment or sessions with the interrogators. For hours I sat there with aching knees, my arse numbed by the wooden floor. Although the goggles had a foam seal, they were painfully tight. With each hour they cut deeper into my face, until the pain across my forehead was on a par with my aching knees. Whenever I attempted to transfer weight from one arse cheek to another, a guard would grab my shoulders and force me onto the ground. The same would happen if a hand slipped from my knee.

I began to taunt the guards, letting one hand slide off my knee and then slowly replacing it as their footsteps approached. I heard other people coughing and realised I was not alone. I continued to amuse myself by sliding a hand off my knee and then returning it.
Nothing too obvious – just a couple of times an hour
, I thought. On one occasion I lowered my hand immediately after hearing the guard's footsteps fade. I then heard a floorboard behind me creak.
Fuck
, I thought, as an aggressive hand grabbed my hand and slapped it onto my lower thigh. The man pushed his knee into my back, raised my left muff and whispered into my ear: ‘Don't do it again, arsehole.'

At one point I was dragged outside and pushed into a muddy pool of water, no more than a foot deep. But the gravelly bottom ground into my arse, and small stones wedged between my cheeks as well as my toes. Someone removed my muffs and told me that I was being punished because I lied about my rank. I sat there shivering, when suddenly a heavy blast of water smashed against my body. Compared to the deathly night air, the water actually felt warm. After a moment it stopped and the night air bit into my skin, and then the water came again.

Resistance-to-interrogation training was a test of self-belief.

I lowered my head, zoning out. I thought of
nothing – not the pebbles against my arse, not the metallic taste of the water or the cold against my skin. Nothing.

After half a dozen repetitions of this I was dragged from the pool and put inside a large freezer. Hanging out in a freezer after some quality time under a fire hydrant redefined my perceptions of what it was to be cold. I tried to mentally remove myself from that space in a feeble attempt to escape the cold, but I could not. I then thought about my grandfather and great-grandfather, and what they must have endured during the World Wars. Unfortunately, though, their stories are as dead as they are. No letters, no diaries – only pictures, medals and a few blurry memories remain.

My grandfather Jack Fennell (second from right), after capturing a piece of German armour in the Middle East during World War II.

I barely knew my grandfather or his father and yet, when tucked into the foetal position inside a freezer,
I thought of them. We were related, and their experiences gave me strength. I had been cold before – I knew what it was like to shiver – but this was special. At first I remained hunched over, nauseated and shaking just a little. But as time dragged on, the deep contractions within my muscles intensified, to the point where my body began to relax and ceased to tremble – the onset of hypothermia.

The day before my grandfather Jack died, I gave him a small ceramic pig I made in art class. Although Ma thought my creation was a hippopotamus, I was proud of that pig. I wondered where it was now. Then I visualised my interrogators' faces and thought:
Fuck 'em. Anyone who thinks up sick shit like this doesn't deserve to be told anything
. I don't imagine I was thinking too straight at this time, but I do remember being pulled from the freezer, taken to a room and given a blanket.
Hot or cold – I wish these fuckers would make up their minds
.

I was kept there until my core temperature rose. We later learned that the Regimental Medical Officer (RMO) was keeping a close eye on all of us during this phase of the exercise.

When Stevie, a hard-hitting operator with more attitude than a high-class hooker, collapsed onto the floor shaking, he was immediately removed from the training and examined by the doc.

‘Steve, are you alright, mate?'

‘Yeah, I'm just bunging it on,' he'd said.

‘What, there's nothing wrong?'

‘Nah, nothing – I'm good to go.'

‘Guards, he's okay. Take him away.'

Stevie managed to surprise our interrogators on more than one occasion. In the middle of one heated session, he raised his hand and informed his interrogators that he needed to take a piss. He was told to hold on to it. Mr Attitude no doubt remained expressionless as he let go and pissed all over himself.

‘Hey – what are you doing? Stop that, you fucking filthy man!' screamed the interrogators. Stevie ignored the abuse and continued to piss.

‘If you want to act like a dog then we'll treat you like one,' one of them said. They had lost their momentum, and so, in an attempt to regain the upper hand, one of them grabbed Stevie by the hair and rolled him in his own urine.

I spent most of the next day seated cross-legged on a folded blanket. We were instructed to perform a range of activities, depending on the number of gongs we heard. This was both annoying and a relief, for my knees were aching constantly. I don't remember the sequence, but one gong might have meant stand up, two to jog on the spot, and three to sit back down. This annoying game continued for hours. The following evening I was taken once again to the mud pool, blasted by the fire hydrant and then chilled in the freezer. My next interrogation session, however, was a little different.

There were two interrogators, one male and one female. The man continued to question me about my rank, informing me that I was an idiot and too pathetic to be an SAS soldier.

‘Look at you, standing there, your shoulders hunched. You look fucking pathetic. I thought you SAS guys were supposed to be something special. I thought you guys were supposed to be in good shape. Do you get back pain? Your posture is the worst I've ever seen.'

Then the woman chimed in: ‘Are you cold, Trooper Fennell?'

Considering that I had recently been pulled from a freezer, I most definitely was cold, but I knew what she was getting at. She wasn't enquiring after my wellbeing; this session was obviously designed to humiliate the captive and shatter his self-esteem.

The man continued: ‘You're a fucking disgrace. Stand up straight. Have a bit of pride in yourself.'

‘And he's cold,' said the woman. ‘Trooper Fennell, do you know why I
know
you're cold?'

I didn't reply.

‘Trooper Fennell, answer me,' said the woman.

‘I can't answer that question,' I replied.

‘Look down. Go on, I want you to look at yourself,' said the woman, her face as cold and ugly as a rotting corpse. ‘Do it!' she yelled.

I glanced down at my naked body, purely to keep the mongrel bitch at bay, but I didn't bother focusing on my penis or testicles. I had a good idea where my testicles were – probably somewhere in my stomach. This little session was doing wonders for my self-esteem. I decided to zone out and leave the interrogators for a while.

One soldier who had completed RTI training the previous year had reacted a little differently. This guy – unlike myself, of course – was a chronic masturbator. When the
female interrogator made derogatory comments about his manhood, he began to touch himself. The woman left the room and he was given a mud bath.

I could still vaguely hear the interrogators yelling at me.

‘You're a disgrace to the Australian army,' spat the man.

‘You must be freezing, Trooper Fennell,' added Miss Sarcastic.

‘Stand up straight. Take some pride in yourself, you sack of shit.'

‘Don't be shy. Are you embarrassed?'

‘Look at his posture. You've got the physique of a scrawny old man.'

‘A scrawny, cold man,' said the woman.

Their comments continued – a flurry of lefts and rights that lacked any real punch. I visualised how hard I had pushed myself over the years. With my mind's eye I reread a Christmas card from my first martial arts instructor:

I remembered the countless hours my mates and I had spent on our knuckles doing push-ups, and how giving in to the pain and dropping to our knees was not an option, because to give up would have been to let Charlie down. I remembered the disappointment on Charlie's face when I told him that I was leaving to pursue another martial art.
He didn't try to talk me out of it; he just thanked me and said he hoped I found what I was looking for.

I recalled being belted from one side of the hall to the other by Instructor Paul as he passed on some of the finer points of wing chun kung-fu. He regularly took me for one-on-one training at the end of class, which was a privilege that must be earned. Then there was the time when Paul palmed one of my students – also one of my mates – a little too firmly in the chest, fracturing his sternum in three places.

I might have looked naked and vulnerable on the outside, but mentally I recalled Charlie's words: ‘Power of the mind and body … power of the mind and body …'

I felt untouchable after that.