First Man In: Leading from the Front

First Man In: Leading from the Front
Ant Middleton

NUMBER 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERNo one is born a leader. But through sheer determination and by confronting life’s challenges, Ant Middleton has come to know the meaning of true leadership. In First Man In, he shares the core lessons he’s learned over the course of his fascinating, exhilarating life.Special forces training is no walk in the park. The rules are strict and they make sure you learn the hard way, pushing you beyond the limits of what is physically possible. There is no mercy. Even when you are bleeding and broken, to admit defeat is failure.To survive the gruelling selection process to become a member of the elite you need toughness, aggression, meticulous attention to detail and unrelenting self-discipline, all traits that make for the best leaders.After 13 years service in the military, with 4 years as a Special Boat Service (SBS) sniper, Ant Middleton is the epitome of what it takes to excel. He served in the SBS, the naval wing of the special forces, the Royal Marines and 9 Parachute Squadron Royal, achieving what is known as the ‘Holy Trinity’ of the UK’s Elite Forces. As a point man in the SBS, Ant was always the first man through the door, the first man into the dark, and the first man in harm’s way.In this fascinating, exhilarating and revealing book, Ant speaks about the highs and gut-wrenching lows of his life – from the thrill of passing Special Forces Selection to dealing with the early death of his father and ending up in prison on leaving the military – and draws valuable lessons that we can all use in our daily lives.

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COPYRIGHT (#ud798aca1-5253-5685-8a15-a8a4b9a54248)

HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

FIRST EDITION

© Anthony Middleton 2018

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photographs © Andrew Brown (author), Shutterstock.com (background)

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Anthony Middleton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008245719

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008245740

Version: 2018-07-09

DEDICATION (#ud798aca1-5253-5685-8a15-a8a4b9a54248)

For Emilie

To the only person who can make me or break me with one sentence. This woman pushes me on a daily basis and will not accept anything less than one hundred per cent from me at all times. When I lose my way, she redirects me. When I put a foot out of place, she stamps on it. And when I fail, she is the only person who can lift me back up and make me feel invincible. My wife is the reason I am here today and she is the lady that has made me the man I am.

CONTENTS

COVER (#uc7f100b2-b64f-5387-b9d7-2dd2ae83d4be)

TITLE PAGE (#ue7e307bf-ca34-5660-8370-518f8c9ce454)

COPYRIGHT (#ua226e9c7-19ce-5fa9-93b2-a1c0e19dc93f)

DEDICATION (#u17cf0914-83ea-59e3-9c43-b347e21410ba)

INTRODUCTION (#ufa341594-72ea-5f00-bc6d-6c32c1391c4a)

PREFACE (#uda5e2e1f-2b53-58cd-a430-3f9d263b8f5f)

LESSON 1

DON’T LET ANYONE DEFINE WHO YOU ARE (#u9f8ba8a7-72b5-5861-bd63-778daae1dbc8)

LESSON 2

MAKE YOUR ENEMY YOUR ENERGY (#u8c7b25cc-5a73-52e8-b8a3-a150ccc8b4b6)

LESSON 3

LEADERS STAND APART FROM CROWDS (#udfa0dd98-aa10-5785-8b5b-b13dbb72aad3)

LESSON 4

MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR DEMONS (#uad819967-f3ce-5965-8d24-7c3c474d9541)

LESSON 5

YOU DON’T NEED TO BE THE LEADER TO LEAD (#u4a07900e-7f15-58fc-8138-2b819807b9a5)

LESSON 6

FAILURE ISN’T MAKING THE MISTAKE, IT’S ALLOWING THE MISTAKE TO WIN (#u193b96ff-108c-53b5-b9fc-ac0ee2f1c38a)

LESSON 7

THE WAR IS ALWAYS IN YOUR HEAD (#uef4e6abd-e0bb-5415-a167-5d79c7841605)

LESSON 8

THE POWER OF INTELLIGENT WAITING (#u0253a746-55cb-5319-9358-c584ede4f7e2)

LESSON 9

HOW TO AVOID A MUTINY (#u4250ff75-82ba-5b99-b7b9-91a971dba358)

LESSON 10

THE ULTIMATE LEADERSHIP LESSON (#u9ba8e633-1d5e-573b-b199-cfa483f699f8)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#u4863919a-b44e-59fb-b06b-75e149bba805)

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#uc0d52980-357d-5049-bb92-c18c1204193e)

INTRODUCTION (#ud798aca1-5253-5685-8a15-a8a4b9a54248)

Of all the people that I meet in my day-to-day life, most don’t have the courage to ask The Question. The majority only know me from the television and so are aware that I served two tours of Afghanistan with the Special Forces. Because my first TV appearance was on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, it’s often assumed that I was a member of the Special Air Service. In fact, I was a Special Boat Service operator. In military parlance I was a point man. My job was to lead a small group of men into Taliban compounds, searching out high-status targets on dangerous ‘hard arrest’ missions. Because of the great secrecy that surrounds Special Forces operations, I can’t talk about them. But I am able to give you a very general answer to The Question.

Killing someone feels like gently pulling your trigger finger back a few millimetres. It feels like hearing a dull pop. It feels like seeing a man-shaped object fall away from your sights. It feels like getting the job done. It feels satisfying. But, beyond that, killing someone feels like nothing at all. You might find that shocking. You might even find it offensive. I’m aware, of course, that mine is not an ordinary response. It’s not even a response that I share with everyone who’s fought in war. Many brave men I served alongside will remain forever traumatised by the horrors they’ve witnessed and taken part in. I truly feel for them. Being part of a ‘hard arrest’ team meant working regularly in conditions of life-threatening stress and being surrounded, almost every day, by blood and killing. But my struggle wasn’t with the trauma all that created. Mine was with its satisfaction. I’d enjoyed it – perhaps, at times, too much. I thrived on combat. I still miss it every day.

In Afghanistan, getting shot at was a regular occurrence. You came to expect it. I viewed survival as a numbers game. As point man, every time I entered a Taliban compound or a room within a compound and knew that there was badness on the other side, I played the odds in my head. It was a bit like roulette – a calculated risk. I’d think, ‘What are the chances of me going through that door and there’s a combatant there who knows I’m coming? If they do know I’m coming, what are the chances of them being able to fire more than one bullet before I shoot at them? What are the chances that one bullet’s going to hit me in the head and kill me?’ When I thought of it like that, I’d usually come to realise the chances were pretty slim. So I’d think, ‘Fuck it, the odds are with me,’ and that would get me through the door.

Sometimes, at this point of entry, there’d be bullets flying in my direction. But experience told me these bursts were usually over in seconds and that the moment there was a pause in firing I could make my move – entering crouched low, because idiots with AKs usually can’t control the natural lift of their weapons and they spray rounds at the ceiling when they fire. I’d think, ‘If he pulls the trigger again, he’ll only have the chance to squeeze it once or twice, max, before I get the drop on him.’ If one or two rounds did come out of his weapon and strike me in the chest plate, it would only be my chest plate. If they hit me in the leg, they’d only immobilise me for a split second. If I fell down, I knew my pal would be right behind me, on my shoulder, and would finish the job in a blink. That was how I saw it – a numbers game. Always the odds. Always a little calculation in my head.

Which is not to say I found it easy. Far from it. Going into an operation, the fear would be horrendous. But as soon as it all began – the moment I breached the compound or made contact with the enemy – I’d enter a completely different psychological space. The only thing I can compare it to is the final seconds before a car smash, when you see how it’s all going to play out in slow motion. Your brain goes into a hyper-efficient state, absorbing so much information from your surroundings that it really does feel as if the clock has suddenly slowed down – as if you’ve got the ability to control time itself.

This enabled me to act with a level of precision in which it seemed I could count in milliseconds. It was a state of pure focus, pure action, pure instinct, every cell in my body working in perfect harmony with each other towards the same end, at a level of peak performance. I didn’t feel any emotion. There was only awareness, control and action. It was the closest thing I could imagine to feeling all-powerful, like God. And that’s what I was, in a way. When I was point man in the middle of a dangerous operation, godlike was how my mind and body felt – and godlike was how I had to act in judging, in a fraction of an instant, who lived and who died.