SAS: Who Dares Wins in the jungle hell

The SAS selection process isn’t meant to be easy.

Relentless hill marches, rigorous fitness assessments and disorientating interrogation tactics are just a handful of the grim tests used to transform regular soldiers into the toughest, deadliest warriors on earth.

In fact, the tasks can be so unforgiving and extreme, they’ve been known to have claimed the lives of those attempting to secure that coveted beige beret.

After ‘The Hills’, which designed to test recruits’ endurance and navigation skills, and before the final combat survival section, the recruits face what many view as the toughest part of all.

During jungle training, the individuals are often shipped out to the British Army Training Support Unit in Belize, Brunei or Malaysia for six weeks.

Soldiers form four-man patrols, living for weeks behind enemy lines, surviving on rations, and losing up to 6kg of bodyweight.

Over the past few years, the notoriously tough TV competition SAS: Who Dares Wins has taken civilian recruits into the deserts of Jordan, the mountains of Chile and the harsh terrain of the Scottish Hebrides.

But last week, the instructors headed somewhere completely different – ‘the deepest, darkest, most unforgiving jungle in the world’ in Thung Ui, North Vietnam.

Along with a change in location, there has also been a change in personnel.

Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham is the Directing Staff’s Chief Instructor for this season due to his previous jungle experience, and speaking about his new role, he says: “Having been a DS on actual military SAS selection and Chief Instructor at the British Army Jungle Warfare Training School in Brunei, there is nobody better placed than myself to lead the recruits through this treacherous environment.

“I’m looking forward to challenging and encouraging the new recruits. However, I will not be accepting any excuses – this will be the toughest course to date!”

Rudy Reyes has stepped down to become a regular DS instructor, alongside Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox.

And finally, there’s new instructor Chris Oliver, a British military veteran former Special Forces operator and Royal Marine mountain leader, who has replaced Navy Seal Remi Adeleke.

Oliver says: “The values I intend to instil in the recruits, as part of the DS, have been forged on operations where we have lost good operators, so they had better be under no illusions – anyone who doesn’t play by the rules will pay the price.”

In tonight’s second edition, 19 of the original 20 recruits remain in the Vietnamese jungle, but one of them is stranded at the top of a 215-foot waterfall.

He’s pinned to the rocks and is in fear of drowning. Will he manage to extricate himself? Billy isn’t confident and explains that he’s lost fellow operatives on similar missions.

Later, a breach of camp discipline leads to a ‘beasting’, entailing a relentless series of extreme physical tasks. And not everyone will survive.

Those who do remain are then subjected to a round of ‘milling’, an extreme form of hand-to-hand combat with fellow recruits.

Can they control their aggression and win the battle, or will they succumb to their opponent’s blows?

As the DS say, if you can fight in the jungle, you can fight anywhere.