Steve Askin scans the hills as dogs seek the scent of another pig in the Canterbury high country in 2014.

Former SAS soldier Steve Askin died in a helicopter crash fighting fires on the Port Hills. Charles Anderson spent time with him soon after he returned from war.

Enduring and surviving - that was the thing.

Even working in the most inhospitable places on earth, Steve Askin was in his element.

RICHARD COSGROVE / FAIRFAX NZ Reporter Charles Anderson is followed by Steve Askin as he carries out a dead boar.

During special forces training in the Southern Alps, where he would wake up under a metre of snow or when he was trudging for days on end with no food and everything in his body was telling him to stop - that was where he thrived.

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I met him more than two years ago after he and a fellow former SAS colleague had come home from the battlefield.

PEDRO UGARTE/AFP David Steven Askin pictured after a firefight with the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2011, while with the NZ SAS.

After more than a decade of being an elite soldier, trained in everything from close quarter combat, mountain survival, and infiltration by air land and sea, they now wanted to come home.

Steve had a young family and he wanted to be there for them.

But what do such soldiers do after they leave what is known as "the regiment"?

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF.CO.NZ Helicopter pilot David Steven Askin died after crashing in Christchurch's Port Hills while battling a blaze.

For Steve and his colleague, it was setting up a company taking people into the bush and teaching them some of the skills that had served them so well.

They taught survival. For 24 hours, they tried to teach me. Steve taught me how to fly a helicopter.

He had grown up in Ruatoria, on the east coast of the North Island - where he and his brother would go out at dawn with a .22 calibre rifle and five bullets and stalk goats all day. They would come home triumphant with food for that evening.

RICHARD COSGROVE / FAIRFAX NZ Steve Askin carries a dead boar to a point where a helicopter can pick it up.

"That became our idea of fun," Steve told me.

He had been a musterer before joining the army. There was no special pull to sign up but in doing so he built a career, eventually becoming a hugely respected member of the SAS.

To get in you had to go through "recruitment" - a gruelling process which tested the limits of your mental and physical capability. Only 10 per cent of applicants get in each year.

When I first met him a colleague told me about a photograph that had been taken several years earlier. It is a compelling portrait of the end of a firefight in Kabul in 2011.

Steve was ahead of the pack, rifle in hand, helmet in the other, blood dripping down his face - staring straight into the lens. It was hard to rationalise this image of him with the gracious, friendly, good natured man that I met.

My impression of him was someone who was full of humility, who loved his new life and his family.

But this was the reality of a special forces soldier - their lives are hidden. Generally, they do not talk about their experiences except with other SAS. They are trained from the beginning of their training to be "grey men" - to blend in to the crowd.

But yet, as this photo shows, they make incredible sacrifices - regardless of how you feel about combat. They put their lives on the line without any expectation of any public acknowledgement. Such a life is hard for us ordinary people to understand.

Steve told me when he was shot he turned to his offsider and said: "I think my ear has been shot off."

His colleague turned back to him and said: "Yup."

What concerned Steve most was not that the bullet was millimetres away from his skull. It was that the sound of the gunshot may have deafened him and he wouldn't be able to sit his helicopter's pilot licence - something he planned on doing when he left the army.

He loved it. He loved being out in the open, vast spaces, just him and the sky.

Back home he used those skills to fight everything from wilding pines, to fires, to helping shuttle goods in and out of Kaikoura after the earthquake. He was always hugely safety conscious and was acutely aware of the risks of his line of work.

Steve had lost friends in Afghanistan but everyone who signed up for the SAS knew that danger was part of the job. Even back home at times he missed it.

"Once it's in your DNA it never leaves," he told me.

But there is an added tragedy to all of this that is also hard to rationalise.

Steve spent his life surviving war zones in Afghanistan only to die in Christchurch doing what he loved - fighting a different battle on the home front.

He deserves to be recognised for both.