After that close call, the rest of the exercise seemed pretty tame. Our reception committee met us in the forest clearing. They’d seen nothing wrong, and didn’t realise we’d almost had a fatality; when they heard, there were a good few mon Dieus flying about, but I’d recovered my composure, and we let down the tension by having a laugh. We quickly established that it was Pavarotti who’d nearly written me off. I couldn’t hold it against him, because it turned out that he himself had gone unstable when clearing the aircraft, and he’d had a load of trouble of his own. The result was that he’d got separated from the rest of the group. He’d been flying back in to re-establish contact when the collision occurred, and he’d never seen me until the impact.

‘Christ, Pav,’ said Whinger. ‘With eyes in your arse like you’ve got, you ought to be able to see in every fucking direction at once.’

As we gathered up our chutes, Pav and I felt our legs stiffening from the bruises we’d sustained, and knew we were going to be pretty sore in the morning. But our French colleagues spirited us past the opposing forces and put us in position to take out the power station that was doing duty as the enemy’s comms centre.

No snags there – and after a wash-up next morning, we moved into the civilian phase of our exercise, which required us to make our way back into England under assumed identities. Use of the tunnel was banned, so we had to travel by sea, using either Dover or Folkestone. The rules laid down that we had to land between midday and midnight – and we knew that the immigration authorities had been briefed by the Int Corps guys from Hereford. In other words, the bastards were poised to intercept us.

We travelled up to the Channel individually, and by the time I reached Calais at about 6.30, after two nights with no proper sleep, I was knackered.

One of the first people I saw on board the ferry was Whinger, easing his nerves with a quick pint of lager in one of the bars. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that someone had put dickers on the ship, trying to eyeball us before we’d even landed; so I went past without giving any sign of recognition. With his Mexican moustache, Whinger looked every inch a veteran SAS operator, and I had myself a private bet that the watchers would pick him up. His face was deeply lined, with telltale furrows up his cheeks and across his forehead, giving it that strained, prematurely aged appearance brought on by years of pushing yourself to the limit.