Events From A Military Jungle Hammock

International SF patrols meet up at final RV after a 10 day hard routine patrol exercise. 1980s last century soldiers.

I first operated in the jungles of Malaya as a 17 year old in the very early 1970s. Way back then we had the SLR rifle with it’s long barrel, canvas jungle boots that rotted off your feet after a few days, and we slept on the floor on a poncho inside a platoon (30+ men) position. We’d all be vulnerable to leeches, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, snakes, wild boar and anything else that would like to attack us…oh yes and the enemy too. But at that time, that was the way that the regular British Army taught and operated. Lots of us in a gaggle on the ground in a very small space inside a circle of rotan, with outposts as sentries communicating back by pulling paracord for early warning.

NB: The poncho was just that, made of a rubberized waterproof green material, rectangular with a hood in the centre. It doubled as a regular poncho to be worn over the head and around the shoulders, or as a ground layer to sleep on. Later we were issued with a light weight waterproof shelter sheet, but the military still referred to it as a poncho. It would be used as overhead cover to keep off the rain. Still lying on the ground, many lads obtained 2 “ponchos,” 1 for overhead cover and 1 as a ground sheet.

Three years later, I would see how we have a chance to survive in the jungle by operating differently when I attended SAS Selection as a student.

This is where the hammock comes into the story.

Unless extremely close to the enemy, we use a hammock on patrol in order to be safe from what can eat us, and get a good night’s sleep at the same time, more importantly for long range patrolling it gives away less sign if being tracked up by the enemy. By choosing the correct area, as a small patrol we can also be safe at night from the enemy. If close in to the enemy, we simply sit against the base of a substantial tree, under a small umbrella to keep our body heat from being lost due to the many heavy downpours of rain that come often through the night. It’s tough work if you can get it, but again, someone has to do it.

We would ensure that the hammock was high enough for a fully grown white male boar to rush under us and not into us! For me, that boar is the most dangerous living thing in the jungles of Borneo, and has killed more people than any other animal including snakes and crocodiles.

So, what events have I witnessed from the jungle hammock?

Someone once asked me what was the biggest “thing” that’s got into someone’s hammock that I know about? I would always tell the same story.

When I was the chief instructor of the British jungle warfare school, we would assist in teaching the RAF aircrew survival course…an annual course at that time. I would advise the students NOT to use a mosquito net with their hammock…because what gets in then finds it very hard to get back out. However one student, a fighter pilot, decided to ignore my advise, and just maybe to this day, still holds the record for the biggest “thing” to find it’s way into his hammock.

It was a monkey! He was screaming, the monkey was losing it too, by not being able to find it’s way back out…and it almost killed the laddie. His face was pulled apart, and he had to be casevac’d out of the jungle soonest by helicopter. I was out of the jungle at this stage as the RAF instructors were in control of that phase of their training.

A bad scenario for all concerned and especially the individual (and the monkey), but a great story to be able to tell to students in the future to make the point.

I’m aware of monkeys coming down into hammocks although very rare, but lads can just shoo them away without the immediate surroundings of a net to keep them hemmed in.

Events from my own hammock (minus any mossie net), have been many, but here’s a few:

One evening while being a member of 22 SAS’s Training Wing’s advance party preparing the jungle camp for the arrival of selection students, I woke up around 2am”ish” to my mate Vince T calling me quietly but with a sense of urgency. What is it Vince I whispered? Just stay still Bob, don’t move a muscle. OK mate. Crack!

Vince just shot dead a big male boar that had been running through our basha area earlier in the night with about 5 or 6 other boars following. It had been standing alone on a track about 20 metres from my basha ready to charge at one of us. Vince fired through my basha between me in my hammock and my poncho.

The white boar was certainly big…in fact it was huge, and so were it’s tusks. The two local Iban trackers who were always key to our training came over from their basha area with their parangs. They had it cut up and into a fire to cook in no time at all. The boar was now food to fly back to their kampong for their families after dropping off the students the following day.

Another incident was another mate in the middle of the night shining his torch and spitting out sweary sentences like what the f*** is that?

It turns out that a very large snake, more than likely a python came down a tree that his hammock was tied to, onto the top of his poncho, and was sliding away on the ground while still coming onto the poncho from the tree…it had to be 12 to 15 feet long.

There was another time where I woke up with my arms folded on my chest, I could feel something rubbing against the bristles on my chin…then I realised there was a weight on my chest. It was a civit cat, rolled up and sound asleep. It would hang around the base camp in the evenings for the rest of the trip.

Last but not least, a gut feeling made me shine my torch under my hammock one night while out with the students, I would always basha up over the ridge from them in order to let them relax and sleep until it was time to get ready for stand to before first light. I watched an army of stinging ants surround and attack a lizard…kill it…and carry it away. If only our army had the tactics and comms of those ants. I must have watched the pincer movements for close to an hour before the bigger call signs moved in enmass.

As if the days in the jungle weren’t interesting enough. The nights from the hammock were most certainly entertaining too.