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Training of S.A.S. recruits—all volunteers from other British army regiments—is exceedingly rigorous. The initial four-week selection course has a 90% failure rate. For starters, recruits are sent crawling through noxious sheep-dips and marching over mountainous terrain in Wales carrying 55-lb. backpacks on a 37%-mile, 20-hr, trek. In one ten-day exercise, half-naked recruits are set down at the mouth of a Welsh valley, harried by deafening sirens and an infantry force firing real bullets. Those who pass these tests are then taught such skills as demolition, lock picking, sabotage, unarmed combat, mountaineering, skiing, underwater diving, field communication and parachute jumping. Constant practice in rescuing hostages in simulated situations on trains, aircraft and from buildings has taught S.A.S. experts split-second timing. In preparation for the Princes Gate assault, the S.A.S. built a scale model of the Iranian embassy and practiced liberating it before attempting the difficult operation.
An honorary member of the regiment is Colonel Charlie Beckwith of the U.S. Special Forces, who led the ill-fated attempt to rescue the American hostages in Tehran. Beckwith was dispatched for training to S.A.S. headquarters in Hereford in 1962, before embarking on a tour of duty in Viet Nam. After the war, he drew on the skills and methods he had learned from the S.A.S. when forming his own commando team of "Charlie's Angels." "Charlie was the best that any army could produce," says an S.A.S. officer. "The difference is that we were operating in our own backyard. He was operating over thousands of miles. Lady Luck was with us, she let him down."