Each year, Ireland's elite - and highly secretive - Army Ranger Wing puts hopeful recruits to the test. Photographer Aidan Crawley follows the month-long selection process, a gruelling test that most will fail
"On my command," shouts the instructor, "step off." The young man in camouflage fatigues obeys without hesitation, plummeting 20m (60ft) from the bridge into the icy water beneath. As he steps off the parapet he bellows "ranger", the kind of soldier he wants to become. The bridge trial is the first of three confidence tests he will have to complete if he is to have a chance of joining the Army Ranger Wing, an elite unit of the Defence Forces.
Based in the Curragh, in Co Kildare, the ranger wing has played a key role in the Defence Forces over the past 25 years, supporting national security at home and abroad. It prepares for numerous military eventualities, including the storming of hijacked aircraft and foreign deployments with the UN. The rangers are also trained to deal with urban-conflict situations, such as hostage-taking, and are trained in parachuting, combat diving, small-boat handling and mountaineering. The unit has been mobilised during jail riots and for VIP protection.
The ranger wing was formed after a spate of IRA kidnappings in the 1970s, and that of the Dutch industrialist Dr Tiede Herrema, which led to a stand-off between the kidnappers and security forces. After that, the government decided it needed a full-time special-forces unit, to help cope with such events.
Last year, it was proposed to increase the unit's numbers from around 100 to 120, in response to a heightened threat to global security and to the possibility of an attack on embassies in Dublin, including those of the US, Britain and Israel.
Any member of the Defence Forces can apply for the Army Ranger Wing's annual selection process, a gruelling month-long test of physical and psychological endurance. Between 60 and 70 usually try out; perhaps only one in 10 will make it through. The rest fall by the wayside from injury or because they fail a test. Others cannot overcome their claustrophobia or fear of heights. Whatever the reason, they have to accept that their ambition exceeds their ability.
Dealing with fear is a foundation for the type of tasks the wing is given. In 2003, for example, rangers were deployed in dangerous parts of Liberia, where they had to rely on their own resources to survive. Building the confidence they need for such missions begins on the selection course.
The instructors are current rangers; most have served overseas, and some have trained with other special-forces units. As one of them puts it: "We have first-hand experience of the selection course, so we know that, while it is tough, it is achievable. Everything we teach them during the course will stand to them in service." In fact, even candidates who do not finish the course learn enough to benefit them when they return to their units. Many of those who are unsuccessful first time around apply a second time.
The course's fitness tests include running and marching on both roads and mountains. These are frequently followed immediately by tests of mental agility; in a real battle, rangers may, after a long march, have to plan how to attack a target.
One of the wing's core values is teamwork. In many of their tasks, candidates must work together while suffering from mental and physical exhaustion, often running or crawling with 15kg (over 30lbs) of kit. In one exercise they have to run up a hill with a stretcher loaded with sandbags, to represent a wounded comrade. Their lungs scream for oxygen.
The pace accelerates in the final week, when the remaining candidates demonstrate what they have learned, from long-range patrolling to ambush and small-unit tactics. It culminates in a late-night attack on "enemy headquarters", fighting soldiers drawn from a reserve battalion. (The reservists are only too glad to take on the prospective rangers, not least because they will be able to say that they worked with the Army's elite.)
Whoever survives until morning faces one last challenge before they can become probationary rangers. Before dawn they are trucked to the Glen of Imaal, in Co Wicklow. At 5am they begin a blistering 40km (26m) march to the ranger barracks, back on the Curragh.
Less than six hours later, the march ends where it all began, five weeks earlier. As they march proudly through the gates they are applauded by men in green berets - their new colleagues in the Army Ranger Wing.