Warcraft: Surviving the wild terrain of the Highlands

DEEP in the Highland woods of Glen Tanar, Lawrence Clark is looking at a footprint. It is still wet and devoid of the pine needles, which cover the ground nearby. “It’s a roe deer, going away and not very long ago,” he concludes.

So far so good, a nature detective trail among stunning scenery, the perfect way to spend an autumn afternoon.

But Clark not only knows how to tell which animals have been here, and when, he also uses that skill to train up Britain’s elite military forces before they are deployed to warzones in places such as Afghanistan.

The Mercian Regiment, Royal Marines and Special Forces have all been through Glen Tanar, passing (often unnoticed) Munro-baggers and picnic-goers as they learn how to cope with some of the toughest tests military personnel can face.

Observation, tracking and survival skills are vital for tasks such as spotting improvised explosive devices, capturing enemy combatants and escaping when trapped in enemy territory.

Clark moved to Scotland nine years ago after working for bushcraft demi-god Ray Mears. His company, Bushcraft Ventures, based in Aboyne, takes groups out into the wilderness and teaches them to survive without the basics of tents, camping stoves or shop-bought food.

His courses for the military also take place across the Highlands as different areas can in part replicate the testing conditions of Afghanistan. For example, the tree-and-bush covered steep hillsides near Fort William have similarities to the Green Zone, the lush river valley which cuts through Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. But he says the fundamentals he teaches can be adapted to nearly any terrain anywhere in the world.

Sitting below a larch tree, he says observation is a vital tool for a soldier to master. “We are bombarded with information but sight is our most important skill. We don’t use our eyes and they [military personnel on his courses] are not used to noticing what is out of place.”

The lessons he gives are deceptively simple, starting with looking at vehicle tracks and assessing their shape and colour and looking at the ground and seeing what plants are growing there. Trainees then progress to trying to pick out things that shouldn’t be there – on a basic level that can be footprints but it might include flattened bushes or a broken branch which has sap running from it, a sign that someone may have passed recently.

Clark says such skills are “in all of us” but in a military context they take on added significance, especially when looking for booby-traps, or enemy combatants. He explains: “They might see someone who looks out of place – just being observant will help them to question it.”

He tailors tracking courses to suit the type of situation a military unit might face such as a search-and-rescue mission for a downed pilot, or a hunt for a targeted individual. Much of his work is with members of Special Forces units.

“Tracking is one of the oldest skills in bushcraft,” he says, as he demonstrates how to walk with the minimum of noise. (You really do slightly bend your knees, looking like a guilty character in a silent movie. The crucial bit is the feet – avoid dry twigs and leaves, press the toes down first then the outside of the boot before rolling the whole foot down.)

In films, rivers are used as a good way of hiding tracks but for Clark they are an excellent place to see which direction someone is heading, through sandbanks (even if footprints have been rubbed away) and broken bushes.

Special Forces, pilots and navigators are also given lessons in how to survive behind enemy lines.

Finding food is a vital skill to master. In Scotland, this can mean taking a tall thistle, peeling off the prickly covering of the stem and eating the centre (it “tastes like celery”). He refers to the birch tree as a “supermarket” – its bark is good for making utensils, it harbours a fungus useful in lighting fires, its leaves can make a tea, oil from its bark is good for waterproofing and its sap can be drank neat, no water needs to be added to get a rich, nutritional fill.

Snares made from three pieces of wood with a log on top to trap small mammals are also demonstrated but how do you cook a rabbit when surely a fire would alert people to your presence?

Clark explains in a way that makes it sound more like the book Swallows and Amazons than the film Black Hawk Down: “You can reduce smoke with wood selection. I advise [participants] to use small pieces of wood.”

Then there are nutrition tips such as mashing berries to eat for an energy rush, using green plants to line your stomach and ignoring mushrooms, not only because they can be poisonous but also because their nutritional value can be negligible.

But how do servicemen and women react when Clark, a civilian, takes them to the woods to teach them how to survive in a warzone?

He says: “I am really impressed by the guys – they are young and very eager to learn. Bushcraft is a skill no longer taught in the military – it is quite a specialist area and, because I am teaching it all the time, I am adapting it and making it more appropriate.”

When he left school, Clark, 41, hoped to join for a careers in the services. But his applications to the army, RAF, Royal Navy and Royal Marines were all rejected; he was told that the psoriasis he suffers from could make him prone to infection in combat zones. Despite spending his working life outdoors in arduous situations, he has never once suffered an infection but says he is by no means a frustrated soldier.

He adds: “Maybe that was meant to be because now I am teaching them – I am out enjoying life.”

The number of deaths in Afghanistan and the severely wounded servicemen and women returning home drives Clark on. He also works with Horseback UK, a charity based near Glen Tanar which helps service personnel suffering injuries, including loss of limbs. They learn skills such as gamekeeping, fishing and bushcraft, using horses as transport, to help with their physical and mental rehabilitation and to open up new job opportunities.

Clark says: “Seeing the injuries that they have got has really pushed me because I don’t want that to happen.” So what does he really think of the war in Afghanistan?

As he points out how to burst a bubble of sap on a pine tree (it can be used as glue) he pauses before saying: “It’s too late now. We have gone in there and we need to see it through to the end, otherwise it would be in vain.”

Clark’s love of the countryside, and specifically bushcraft skills, first developed as a child in Essex, when his father, who served in Korea with the Essex Regiment, would take him to Hainault Forest. “We just used to go in the woods,” he says. “My eldest brother was in the TA and I used to do a few things with him as well.”

It was in 1991 that he did his first course with Ray Mears, star of TV survival programmes and a respected expert on bushcraft. By the mid-1990s he had been trained up by Mears and worked as one of his instructors. He set up his own business after moving to Scotland in 2002, a place he was instantly attracted to as an exponent of bushcraft because of its extensive wilderness areas..

The move north came when Clark met his partner Hilary – under less than usual circumstances.

Hilary, who lived in Aberdeen at the time, was a student on one of his courses when she sliced through a tendon on her hand. Lawrence took her to hospital, keen to make sure any damage wasn’t permanent. Hilary bore no ill-will and continued with the course.

He says: “She did really well and I was impressed with her and kept in touch and then a trip to Sweden meant we haven’t looked back.”

Despite his military clients, for Clark the skills of bushcraft are a way of living in harmony with the local environment for everyone.

As he inspects the droppings of a pine marten to see which insects it has been eating, he says the key to surviving in any terrain is to “leave nothing but footprints, and sometimes not even them”, just like the secretive marten itself.