Family tragedy set Nigel on a path to join the SAS
Robert Harries hears from a former SAS soldier about his life of adventure, tragedy, intrigue... and secrets
HE had a bit of a bad reputation as a boy. Pinching, drinking – he even stopped smoking at
15.
Nigel Thomas lives near Llansteffan and has lived a life full of adventure, tragedy, intrigue and secrecy.
A butcher at 22, an SAS solider at
26. He’s fallen out of a helicopter, had a new hip (with another on the way) had an operation on his knee and broken his neck.
He wouldn’t change a bit of it, though.
He’s travelled the world – South America, the Middle East, Europe – but he can’t talk too much about what he’s done and what he’s seen. That’s the deal with SAS soldiers. Even his family don’t know.
So how did this tearaway teen from Bancyfelin, now aged 55, transform his life to become one of the most respected servicemen in the country?
Most of us can’t contemplate what a soldier does and has to go through, never mind a member of the Special Air Service.
When Nigel embarked on the course to get into the special forces almost 30 years ago, he was one of 194 hopefuls. He was also one of the eight that made the cut. Special indeed. But what makes someone who worked as an apprentice butcher pack it all in, so to speak, for a life away from home, a life on the frontline, a life in perpetual peril? Tragedy, that’s what.
“I had a bit of an unusual upbringing,” says Nigel, sitting in a classroom at the security training centre he runs and owns outside Carmarthen.
“My mother had multiple sclerosis. She had been in a wheelchair since I was about seven, so I had to care for her for most of my childhood.
“My father was a mechanic, and one day I was helping him fix a bus when we called into a local butcher shop to buy some faggots.
“I asked for a job, covered in oil. Not surprisingly, the man said no.
“I went home, cleaned myself up, and the next day I went back and asked again. He said no again. Tried again, he said no.
“I don’t know why I kept asking, but I did. Eventually he said yes, and that changed my life.
“The man who gave me the chance was Phil Hughes, who still runs the butcher shop in St Clears, and one day I was speaking with his father who asked me what I did with my money.
“I suppose I did what most teenagers did with their money, I spent it.
“He took me to the bank the next day and helped me open my first bank account, and everything changed.
“I became sensible, I stopped drinking, stopped messing about and took up karate. That put me on a straight path.”
The main thing that changed Nigel’s life, however, was not his incessant ambition to become a butcher, nor was it his new-found passion for clean living. His mother, whom he had spent the majority of his childhood caring for, died in his arms. He was only 19.
“I didn’t speak to my father for years after that,” admitted Nigel. “I guess I was blaming him.”
At 22, Nigel hung up his cleaver and joined the Royal Marines.
“My mate was in the Marines and he just looked really fit so I thought I would give it a try. Twelve months later, I joined,” revealed Nigel.
“But I didn’t have a clue. I went to Pembroke Dock but that was the wrong place, then they sent me to Swansea. Training was 30 weeks long, and I picked up injury after injury – stress fractures, knee injuries, everything. But, all I could think about was one thing: having seen what mum had gone through, this was nothing.”
Nigel can’t talk about a lot of his operations, what he’s done and for what purpose. He also reveals that he can’t remember a lot of it. The idea of desensitisation is one we often associate with people who have witnessed the horrors of life. This was no different for Nigel.
Trauma, bodies, hospitals, morgues. But the numbing of his emotions came much earlier, before he even joined the forces. His desensitisation came when he, as a teenager, held his mother as she drew her last breath.
“It doesn’t get worse than that, I don’t care what you see,” he said.
Having left the forces at 36 due to a catalogue of injuries vast enough to make a doctor wince, Nigel has forged a career for himself in private protection, and in the setting up of his business Blue Mountain Group, which trains, prepares and educates people on security.
The company trains soldiers, security officers, civilians and journalists, getting them all ready for a period on the front line.
“We teach people about medical trauma, bombs, gunshots, observation. We’ve had people sit our course after they’ve been to places like Syria and they’ve said ‘I wish I’d known that before I’d been out there’.”
On his travels, Nigel has worked at the Pentagon in Washington and the Kremlin in Moscow.
There is one event in Nigel’s life that continues to cut the deepest. Having forged a career and life for himself in the forces, he has become an inspiration to many.
That’s exactly what happened with his great-nephew, Nigel Dean Mead. All he ever wanted to do was join the Royal Marines. At 17, his dream became a reality.
He hadn’t been in Afghanistan long. “Deano”, as he was affectionately known, approached a compound in Helmand province with his colleagues from the 42 Commando Royal Marines. He was blown up by an improvised explosive device shortly after his helicopter had landed near the compound. He was 19.
“He hadn’t been there long. I still feel a lot of guilt about that. He was killed following in my footsteps. That put me in a bad place.”
Nigel was proud of his great-nephew. You can hear it in his broken voice. It’s been seven years since that fateful day in May 2011 but you can still feel the pain and the emotion protruding.