Pagoda Team 1980.
‘THERE WAS NO leave when we got home. We were going to spend most of our time in Hereford from now on and go home every night, so who needed leave?
Team training started almost immediately, run by the squadron handing over to us, G Squadron. This was always the case because counter-terrorist equipment was constantly being improved and even if men had done the job before, it was likely that drills and equipment had changed dramatically in the short time between tours.
The squadron was broken into two teams: 6 and 7 Troops were the red team, 8 and 9 Troops the blue team, and each team was further divided into two, assault and sniper. Although everyone was trained as an assault team member, only half were trained as snipers as well.
I had always loved shooting at long range and offered myself as a sniper. I talked up my time on team competitions and all the shoots I had done at Bisley, the Army small-arms ranges near Pirbright. After a considerable amount of waffle, I got the job and the nickname Bisley Bob, later shortened to just plain ‘Bisley.’
The next four weeks were spent practicing assaults on buildings, buses, ships and aircraft. I spent long days and nights firing my three sniper rifles at stationary and moving targets. My L49 was the standard British Army sniper rifle, accurate up to a thousand yards in the right hands. The other two were Tikka Finlander hunting rifles, one with a day-scope and the other with a night-scope. These were good only up to three hundred yards. The L49 fired a 7.62mm NATO ball-round, which was standard-issue ammunition. It had great range and could penetrate thick glass, wood and brick. The Tikka fired 5.56mm hollow point. Hollow point was the best anti-terrorist ammo: when a round hit a man's head, it flattened itself, releasing all its energy into the point of impact. This created a