Both men and women had to complete the course, and they would be equally tired, aching and covered in cuts and bruises having crawled on their bellies and trekked up mountains. The training began with a hard slog over the unwelcoming terrain of Invernesshire. This policy was applied right up to the final briefing. The agents being trained came from a range of nationalities, and each group was housed in separate schools, as security protocol dictated that they should not mix. They included physical training, silent killing, weapons handling, demolition, map reading, compass work, field craft, elementary Morse, and raid tactics. The courses lasted at first for three weeks but were later increased to five weeks.
The paramilitary schools were based at ten shooting lodges in the Arisaig and Morar areas of Invernesshire, with the SOE staff headquarters in Scotland based at Arisaig House. Man wearing an SOE parachutist suit - these were nicknamed 'striptease suits' The assessors gave the students a wide variety of tests over a four-day period, the SOE setting much store on the psychological make up of its agents. In place of the Preliminary schools, it set up a Student's Assessment Board (SAB) at Cranleigh, Surrey. In June 1943 SOE introduced a more streamlined method for the initial selection of students. Agents who fell at this initial hurdle would be sent to the 'cooler' at Inverlair, in Invernesshire. The Preliminary schools syllabus included physical training, weapons handling, unarmed combat, elementary demolitions, map reading, field craft and basic signalling (use of radio communications). Not until all these stages had been successfully completed would the agents be sent to a holding flat or residence, where they awaited their final briefing before being dropped into 'the field'. The trainee agents then learned about parachuting at Ringway, Manchester, and finally their spy craft techniques were polished up at the SOE's own finishing schools for spies, the group B schools, based at Beaulieu in the New Forest.
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