Black Water

Less well-known than their high-profile colleagues, the SBS likes to say that they do everything the SAS does, but in diving suits, full aqualung, and in thirty feet of cold, dark seawater. This book tells of one man's life within the SBS, the first time someone at his level has told his complete story. The author served in every field of war Britain has been Involved in over the last thirty years, often in covert ways. Mountain warfare in the Oman and the Falklands gave way to the urban environments of Belfast and the surrounding bandit country of South Armagh as Don Camseli ran undercover operations in Northern Ireland. In assisting the 'Det', the RUC's elite unit, Don was involved in monitoring senior members of the IRA (now very high-profile indeed) and those who were turned into witnesses against the IRA. Back on regular duties, he was part of a unit that spied on the Russians in Gibraltar Harbour. Launching an assault from inside a submarine in order to scale North Sea oil rigs in sixty foot waves, we learn the one golden rule; 'if anything goes seriously wrong underwater, it's three or four times as bad as something going wrong on land. Because you will drown.'